House Divided
by Roseveare
Summary: In which Nathan still has A Plan To Rescue Audrey, Duke wants to know if it's as lousy/suicidal as the last one, and Mara also has plans, too many of them to count. Mara/Nathan/William. Sequel to Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld. PLEASE READ NOTES AND WARNINGS. [10 of 10 - EPILOGUE: Nathan must find a way to set things right, and curb William and Mara, one way or another.]
1. Prologue

TITLE: House Divided  
AUTHOR: roseveare  
RATING: R/Mature for this version.  
LENGTH: 80,000 words over 10 parts.  
WARNINGS: Dubious consent, non consent, dark, Despair Event Horizon.  
CHARACTERS: Mara|Audrey Parker, Nathan, William, Duke, Jennifer, Dwight.  
SHIPPING: The fic is **Audrey/Nathan** and **Duke/Jennifer** in spirit while the active 'pairing' is the threesome of **Mara/Nathan/William**. (I suspect this almost stands as a warning in itself.)  
SUMMARY: In which Nathan still has A Plan To Rescue Audrey, Duke wants to know if it's as lousy/suicidal as the last one, and Mara also has plans, too many of them to count.  
NOTES: Okay... I'm going to put this on fanfictiondotnet because _Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld_ is on this site. It will mean making some cuts to chapter 3, but **additionally, the proper version of this story is illustrated** , and it also has a vid, and it can be found in full at **(archive of our own dot net) (works) 4394303**. Or just google House Divided roseveare AO3. fanfictiondotnet really does not want me to get the link in here in any fashion that makes it easy for you to access.  
NOTES #2: (so many notes) Direct sequel to _Eurydice's Adventures in the Underworld_ , which has a podfic version if that makes the catchup easier (but which you will also have to look to AO3 for). To recap, in _Eurydice_ , Nathan agreed to accompany Mara to help bring William back from the void after the season 4 finale. During their adventures on the other side of the gate, Mara forced upon him repeated Troubles to help their quest and bind him to her. In the major incendiary moment of that story, Mara, upon finding William again, decided to keep Nathan and physically share him with William, and in the fallout they returned to Haven still bound together while Nathan's plan to trap them all in the void to keep Haven safe unravelled.  
There is a **warning for rape/non-con** for this story on account of events in Chapter 3-4. Even outside of that, all the consent issues for the Mara/Nathan/William triangle. All three of them are manipulated by influences beyond their own choices and the relationship isn't entirely consensual from any perspective. In addition to this specific warning, **the fic is generally disturbing and dark in tone**. Be warned.  
This fic is was posted for wipbigbang on livejournal. It originally stalled last year at the end of Chapter 2, when I did not have time to finish it before season 5 started.  
A NOTE ON CANON: This picks up from _Eurydice_ , which was written before season 5 started. Therefore, the rules on how Troubles are created and the Mara-Audrey divide work slightly differently from season 5 canon.  
THANKS: Many thanks to my beta reader, Miah_Arthur, who was subjected to discussion about this 80,000 word evil behemoth of a fic for most of June-July.

* * *

 **House Divided**

 **Prologue**

The first day she was back in Haven, Mara built a wall around the town, to wall the Troubles in, to keep the outside world out. The second day, pressed by the combined force of Haven's police and the Guard led by Dwight and Vince Teagues, she managed to elude the attention of everyone, disappearing and taking William and Nathan with her. She reappeared on the third day as a storm lashed the coastline and only the bold or foolhardy ventured out to witness her handiwork - a castle built upon the spot on the island where the Barn had once stood - and at that point it became obvious she wasn't intending to hide.

Over the days that followed, new Troubles showed up in town. Some of them strange, unpredictable, weak or half-formed; Mara experimenting, and the whole town waited in fear for where the next curious target might explode.

Mara has been on the island seven days, and in Haven for ten, by the time Duke and Jennifer take a fishing boat out in the haze of early dawn.

Duke isn't ready to give up on Nathan and Audrey just yet. He needs to _know_. Nathan, when he came back, after he'd hardly been away for half an hour, looked half broken and wholly unlike himself. Duke keeps seeing again in his mind's eye the way Nathan knelt in front of Mara on the floor of that cave. The way Nathan stood up and fell in by her side as if that was where he belonged.

Duke does not know what Mara did to bring Nathan to that, in the time they were gone - which he knows is supposed to be more time than passed for himself and Jennifer, but it wasn't _years_ , and Duke can only imagine that it would take _years_ to make Nathan as submissive and cowed as he seemed that day.

Jen's opinion is ruder, but she's still here for him, muttering under her breath as she helps Duke pull the boat up the shore, her boots sinking over their rims in the sand.

The morning is wet, with drizzle slicking everything, and everything shiny and slimy. The air smells of damp and sea and foliage, of rotting seaweed on the shore. The light is still a little grey. Duke does not really expect that Mara or William will be up and around at this time. Audrey wasn't the rise-with-the-dawn type, though she'd happily spring up at the last minute with her alarm and a hit of coffee for the day's policework. Mara didn't strike as that type, and nor did William.

No. If they're to see anyone around at this hour, it has to be Nathan. And it's Nathan who he wants answers from.

They hide the boat under an overhanging tree growing out of rocks at the edge of the beach. It won't fool anyone looking closely, but he's hoping no-one will do that. They start to pick their way up the rugged terrain onto the main part of the island. Jennifer's boots slosh as she walks. "How come your feet didn't sink?" she hisses irritably.

"Practice," Duke murmurs. He knows where to put his feet, but fifty percent of it is also luck.

"I still think this is crazy," she hisses back at him. "And I'm an _expert_ on crazy."

"Shh." He holds a hand back to caution her. There are trees on this side of the island, the reason they chose to make landing here, but they haven't reached the tree line yet, and Duke just heard something which he does not think was their footsteps or an echo.

A shape moves out of the trees ahead. Duke dives back, pulling Jen down with him, trying to make his body as elastic and slack as his practice of Yoga allows, to curl down quietly. He slaps his hand over Jen's mouth and hopes for the best. She struggles against him for a second, then her eyes fly wide and she stops abruptly as she sees the thing.

Its silhouette looks sort of like a police uniform. For a very brief moment, Duke thinks it's a HPD officer. Then, he realises that the light is on the figure, not behind it. He should be seeing details, not a silhouette. The darkness is intrinsic to the figure. He shudders, creeped out, and the shudder proves contagious as Jen catches it and trembles in his grasp.

The figure turns its head - or _hat_ , since that's almost its only distinguishing feature - and then goes stalking off along the shore away from them.

They crouch frozen in silence as minutes tick by. The creepy figure has been long out of sight by the time Jen asks, hushed, "What the hell was that?"

"Some kind of guard," Duke hazards, not knowing and not wanting to know. Because the first thing that occurs to him... "Mara's giving Nathan Troubles. She has no real powers other than that. That thing was... it looked like a HPD officer, kind of, and Nathan was Police Chief for a while last year. This has got to be something to do with him."

He knew, sure, Nathan loved _Audrey_ , but he doesn't understand why the hell Nathan would let Mara do this. Why Nathan would decide to lend any loyalty to Mara. She killed two people sealing off the town that first day. One got mangled by whatever barrier came down, the other it hit his car and the engine exploded. She didn't care. Duke cares. Doesn't Nathan?

Jen squirms in his grip, growing restless. He lets her go and slowly starts to pick himself up.

"We've seen _that_ and we're still going on?" Jen questions.

Duke swallows. "Yeah. Whatever that thing was, if it's Nathan's... I can't believe he'd hurt us. No matter what's happened to him."

"Yeah, because we've all seen how well people regularly control their Troubles," Jen points out. Which is a good point. Duke's steps waver - he's not made of stone - but he starts moving forward again nonetheless. Jen says, "Damn it," and he hears her following him. It's not that Jennifer doesn't like Nathan (she tells him that, and he keeps telling himself), it's just she finds him irrational and alarming and hasn't known him for thirty years to get the context for that.

"Come on," Duke wheedles. "I have to believe... after what's happened to Audrey, I can't give up on him, too. Not without even _trying_." He reaches out behind him and she slips her hand in his, nodding quietly. Together, they move into the trees and creep through the shadows. The turrets of Mara's castle rise up above the tree tops. She isn't exactly difficult to find.

They push onward. Duke starts to get that tickle on the back of his neck; that horrible, no-good, you're-being-watched tickle. His breaths feel increasingly short with anxiety and he pulls Jen closer and keeps moving, trying to tell her with the subtle touch of his hands but not wanting to freak her out either so not really telling her anything. He wraps his arm closer around her and draws her in, even though it makes it more difficult to walk. She accepts it as, he suspects, just shield against the cold and the rain. When whatever's stalking them makes its move, he hopes he'll be able to protect her.

Maybe coming here was the wrong choice.

Noises from above startle him, but it's just crows in the treetops. Then something else rustles back in the undergrowth. Then-

Harsh rasping breathing and heavy footsteps pounding the ground, the slap of wet clothes and flesh as someone moves fast and carelessly. And Nathan pounds out of the trees in front of them, meeting the sight of Duke and Jennifer without surprise, yelling a breathless, desperate warning as he lunges closer.

He skids to a halt, intercepting something coming out of the trees. " _No!_ " he barks with panic. "No!" he yells again, arms spread, legs planted in front of a dark shape as tall as he is but immensely more threatening. Duke notices his eyes are shut. "There's no danger. They're friends. _Leave them_."

The silhoette shape of the HPD officer fades away, and Nathan heaves half a sigh of relief, but doesn't even bother finishing before turning on Duke and demanding, "What are you _doing here_? Do you understand that you almost got killed?"

"Yeah, uh - thanks for that." Duke holds up his hands, pacifyingly, and takes a step to one side, in front of Jen. Nathan like this freaks her out. She was never exactly _great_ with him before he came back from who-knows-where as Mara's henchman. Nathan falls back as he sees the reaction. Duke squints at him, taking a really good look. "Nathan?"

Nathan's bare chested, which means bullet scars, which okay, Duke knew. He wasn't ready for the burns. He saw Nathan that day in the lighthouse, the day that had been weeks from Nathan's perspective, but he only saw the damage visible on hands and face. Nathan's hair hasn't had chance to grow back in properly, and that's still the most shocking part. But the burns on his hands also extend further up his arms than Duke ever expected, up past his elbows, and there are patches on his shoulders, and on one revealed hip where the waist of his pants is sagging. Duke's shock at the extent of the damage changes to anger as he realises that the burns look months old, and what their healed condition means.

"Did you make Dwight 'fix' that?" Duke asks hotly. "You - _her_? Is that why he was so fucking terse the other morning? A night-time visit from Mara and the posse?"

Nathan's brows crunch a bit. "I didn't want - Dwight's okay. It was the respiratory damage she was worried about."

He did sound like shit, before, and his voice is back to being only a little rougher than normal now.

"Do you even know what that Trouble she forced on him does to him?" Duke demands. "Or do you just not care?"

"Oh, let me cry a fucking river," Nathan snaps back. He looks at Jennifer and his lips compress and twist. "I've got _seven_ of my own to worry about."

"Shit, Nathan." Duke's anger subsides in an instant. This isn't what he came for. "I know you think you can still pull Audrey out of Mara somehow, but you _can't_. You don't need to stay with her to - to let her screw around with you like this. Come back with us. Come on, Nate. Right now."

Nathan stares at him. "I can't. Even if I wanted to, she'd come looking for me. That could put you and anyone next to you-" he eyes Jennifer again "-right in the line of fire."

Duke feels something in him relax at Nathan's answer. It's more rational than the one he'd been expecting. It makes him think maybe there's a chance for Nathan's sanity. That he has clearly been through a lot, but there still might be a way _back_. "Come anyway," Duke says, the urge to salvage his friend a rush inside him. "We can fight her. This is - it's giving in, Nathan! No-one is asking you to surrender yourself to her."

Nathan squints at him. His eyes glint like coals in their deepening pits in his face. "Don't you know what my being here _does_?" he rasps. "If I'm next to her, I can say _no_. I can - they'll only do worse things without me!"

"Bullshit." As if Nathan has that kind of control over Mara, let alone William. "Nathan, you can help us. She gave you a fuckton of Troubles. _Useful_ Troubles. Come back to town. Help us fight the rest of the shit she's done. Help us take them both down."

It doesn't make a dent. Nathan's face just goes more stony. "I'm dangerous, Duke. I _barely_ control them. I can't be around normal people. Look..." He edges closer... close enough that Duke is abruptly nervous to have him that close, all bare-chested and smelling of... The earthy scents of sweat and sex tickle Duke's nose, and the _punch_ of that realisation takes his breath away. He almost misses what Nathan's leaned in to so quickly and quietly hiss: "I have a plan. I need to..."

"Like hell!" Duke is still flattened by the revelation that Nathan is screwing Mara. Doesn't Mara have William for that? "Your plans are always _lousy,_ or _suicidal_ , or both! The last one landed us with both William and Mara back in town!"

Nathan grabs his collar, but it's urgency, not anger, despite the jolt that the abrupt action gives Duke. "Shut up!"

Jen's there in an instant, swatting at Nathan's arm with her hands. "Let him go! Are you evil now, too?"

Nathan shoots her a 'WTF?' face and unhooks his fingers, splays his palms out, and takes a very small step back. " _Okay_ , but you need to keep this quiet and short and then _get out_. Mara's awake, so we don't have much time. She's already going to be wondering where I am. If she catches you here..."

Wait, how does he know that?

"I'm still trying to help," Nathan says. His eyes are sincere and liquid, but they're still wild and half-mad. He came back with that, as well as the scars.

"Duke, let's go." Jen tugs on Duke's arm. "What if he's right? I don't want to meet Mara again. We can't do anything else today."

The purpose of coming to this island was to see Nathan. This _isn't_ the conversation or the circumstances Duke had expected, but then he really didn't know what he was expecting. It's obvious Nathan isn't going to come back with them. Duke could try to force it - he still has the Crocker Legacy, for all that Mara took from him all the accidental extras that were killing him - but he'd have to draw Nathan's blood and he doesn't think he can get through the Sue Storm routine. He's seen the forcefields in action.

If he can't drag Nathan back to Haven, and he can't talk Nathan back to Haven, he's still reluctant to go. Even with Jen in danger. "Damn it, Nathan, you've got to give me something!" He tries hard to keep his voice low. "Help me understand. Am I supposed to walk away and abandon you to this? To Mara's _bed_?"

A shiver goes through Nathan, rippling across his bare chest as Duke spells it out, and _shit_. Duke doesn't want to think about that too much.

Nathan heaves a breath. "I brought her back, and I'll deal with her. There _is_ a way. I'm just... figuring things out. Give me time."

Duke rolls his eyes and flails his hands but Nathan is all emoting at him to trust him and there's nothing he can _do_. He needs to get Jen out of here. Himself, too.

"Damn it!" he cries out, reluctantly looking back to where he'd left the small boat. He sees relief shift the tense lines of Nathan's body as he gives in.

"Go quickly," Nathan says. His face twists as though he's going to say something else, but then he turns and plunges back through the trees, disappearing into the shadows.

"It's not like he could vague it up any more," Jen says.

"No, he's-" Duke's _deeply_ unnerved. "It's not paranoia if they are out to get you. He said 'Mara's awake'. He wasn't guessing, he _knew_ that. He barely dared to _speak_. I can't even imagine what they've done to him." He makes a noise of frustration. "We got what we came for. Come on." He hooks his fingers in her sleeve and starts picking his way back down the slope to the beach where they left the boat.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Jen trips after him. Her fingers dance on his shoulder, trying to get his attention. "What do you mean, we got what we came for? We got nothing!"

"Talked to Nathan," Duke answers, trying to place his eyes on all directions at once.

"What about... Wade's stuff? The pen?"

Duke grunts. "Well," he says with equal measure of amusement and discomfort. "That would be why I just bugged Nathan's pants."

* * *

When Wade - and Jordan - managed to go off the rails and get themselves killed, they still left behind on Duke's boat the surveillance toys that Wade had been playing with. It's those they've brought with them to the island now. Duke slipped the pen with the bug and camera in it into Nathan's pocket as he leaned in so close. He _almost_ didn't have the presence of mind to do it, with all that crazy conversation and the stench of sex on Nathan messing with his brain, but Nathan is particularly vulnerable to actions like that. He couldn't feel Duke's hasty, clumsy planting of the bug.

They retreat to the end of a line of rock pinnacles left behind by cliff falls. It's not easy, but there's a low gravel bank the currents have built up where it's possible to pull the boat up again. Duke isn't sure if the equipment is powerful enough for the signal to carry as far as the mainland, but from here they shouldn't be seen, and it's close to the castle but inaccessible from land.

He boots up the screen under a tarpaulin to keep off the rain and the spray. Jen's head keeps ducking in beside him, for all she's supposed to be on watch. "Let's find out just what goes on between Nathan and Mara," Duke says grimly.

Maybe forty minutes have passed since Nathan stalked away. The dawn has almost shifted into daylight. Duke's concerned that Nathan might have discovered the bugged pen already, but the first thing he sees when he loads the screen is the inside of a decadent room. Mara sits on the edge of an enormous gold and black four poster bed, legs wide, completely naked.

"Oops," Jen says, behind him, and gives an embarrassed giggle.

Given the timing, Duke thinks that, yeah, it probably was forseeably going to be like this.

"Where have you been?" Mara's words come distantly through the feed, only just audible. She's several feet away and it's a funny, sideways view of her. The bug is poking out of the back pocket of Nathan's pants and he's not facing her directly. The view shakes, skews and falls as Nathan drops his pants.

Duke mutters a curse and lifts a hand to block Jen's eyes. "Hey!" she protests, tugging at his wrist.

"Stop staring at Nathan's ass."

"I wasn't staring at his _ass_ ," she retorts, with a mock pompous edge.

Nathan's voice in the feed mumbled something about "patrolling" while they were occupied. Now they watch the skewed image from the pen camera, pointing sideways and up, as Nathan walks over to the bed and stands in front of Mara. There's a drag in his steps like he doesn't want to, but he goes to her all the same. Nathan's ass has a burn scar on it, too.

" _Nathan_ ," Mara's voice, tiny on the laptop, still manages to sound like she's speaking of him as a piece of precious property.

"You had me create guards for your island," he rasps. His defiance is apparent even in miniature, and for that, at least, Duke is grateful. "It's not my fault if I'm woken up by every pair of nesting sea birds that makes a commotion."

"Nesting..." Jen mouths.

"No-one is coming here," Mara says. "They're all too afraid. Ignore the gulls and come back to bed." The direction of her gaze and words shifts to someone on her right side, even as she takes Nathan's hands and draws him down. "I told you not to be paranoid, my love." Her fingertips slide down Nathan's chest and he closes his eyes and shivers, but she's not even looking at him.

William rises out of the bed behind Nathan, slipping one arm around Nathan's waist with easy familiarity, moving his thigh alongside Nathan's thigh and pressing the front of his body close along Nathan's back. Duke sees all movement in Nathan's body cease. William's other hand slides over his jaw and cups his cheek. Nathan shivers, arching helplessly under the touches - which are startlingly gentle and passionate, considering they come from _William_ , that lunatic, psychotic joker. William lowers his face to kiss Nathan's neck and Duke can only watch Nathan, touch-deprived and screwed-up, press back against the other man's naked body. Duke remembers how helpless Nathan always was before Audrey's power to touch him.

Nathan abruptly shakes himself out of it, jerking within William's grip, fighting the touch and his own reaction to it. Until Mara lays hand on him again, rising high on her knees between his legs, and pulls his head between her breasts. Something happens to Nathan. The fight drains out of him like a switch has been flipped. Duke watches in disbelief as he curls his arms around Mara and his face pushes in, licking and suckling, and he becomes so focused on her that William is left to do as he pleases.

"Oh my God," Jen says.

Duke slams the screen shut and slaps the tarp down over the computer. For long moments, he doesn't have words. He's not going to watch that, he's sure as hell not going to watch Jen watch it, but it's pretty fucking clear what's about to happen. Where William's hands were, where his-

 _This_ is the situation Nathan swears he has under control? _These_ are the people he believes he has any influence over? When they're both about to lay him out and use him like-

Nathan has had a lot of crazy plans and a lot of big ideas. It's kind of a thing with him. But to entertain any notion that he possesses some kind of _control_ in this situation...?

Duke shakes his head and looks down. Jen's grabbing at his arm, her face intent and her eyes large. "We need to go back and get him out of there!"

Duke wishes more than ever that he'd tried to use the Crocker Legacy back on the island: grabbed Nathan and bundled him into the boat and to hell with Mara, to hell with Nathan's plans and his new array of Troubles. He wouldn't be sitting here on this boat knowing _that's_ happening to Nathan and he can't do a thing to stop it. "We can't," he says tightly. Even if they went back, it's happening _now_ , and will be over by the time they get to Mara's castle. That's even assuming they could get inside, which they probably can't, but even if they could, they'd be faced with Mara and William, and it's not possible.

Duke clenches his fists at his sides and shakes.

From the way everyone was acting, this was not the first time. Nathan was resistant and unhappy, but not surprised. Neither William or Mara acted like it was anything new.

Is this why he came back from the other side of the gate so changed?

Duke's heart is pounding so hard he can hear it. He can't believe that _Nathan_... All of this is so much more screwed-up than he ever imagined. It was one thing to think about Mara and Nathan fucking - she's kind of Audrey-gone-bad, after all - but Nathan loathed William, and so far as Duke knows, Nathan's not into men.

Did this start out as some attempt at seduction gone horribly wrong? Or has Mara convinced Nathan she loves him because Audrey did? Does Nathan think they value him more because they fuck him? What the hell happened to him when Mara leaned in and touched him with that expression of _intent_? Because _that_ was not normal and that did not look like Nathan had a choice.

Duke feels ill.

Nathan has always been so stand-offish and untouchable. The idea that Mara and William have somehow broken down his resistance and his pride to this extent sends Duke into a helpless rage.

He scrabbles for his phone, in a waterproof pouch in his pocket, and gets as far as having his fingers poised on the buttons before he realises the signal's probably too terrible from here to bother. He grunts frustration and mimes a false start at hurling the phone into the sea.

"What are you doing?" Jen asks, alarmed by his erraticness.

"I am..." He makes himself put the phone away. " _When_ we get back to shore, I am calling Dwight. Calling _everyone_. We may not be able to do anything, but maybe the Guard can."

There is no possibility anything of Audrey remains, if Mara would use Nathan like that. He has to get used to the idea that Audrey's gone and a monster wears her face. If Nathan has multiple Troubles to wield against them, they'll need multiple Troubles to take him down. They can't get to Mara and William without going through Nathan.

To hell with Duke's fate and that damned tattoo.

Mara and William are going _down_.

* * *

 _It's hazy and unreal like a dream. The devastation of the battle that raged, most of the street around them flattened or buried under rubble. Nathan has become a one man engine of destruction beyond anything Duke imagined, but it's not all on his head. The Guard Troubles were also fucking frightening._

 _Most of the casualties strewn around are from their side, but not this one, broken and bloodied on the ground in the arms of the woman they were aiming for. All this and they may have only succeeded in destroying what Duke most wanted to save._

Why did he fight so hard for them?

 _Duke figured all they'd really need to do was prove to Nathan that Mara and William could be beaten. They didn't need his crazy plans, his martyrdom or prostitution or whatever the hell the sacrifice of his body in such a fashion should be called. Nathan would change sides and fight for_ them.

 _Duke knows he loves Audrey to the point of madness... But_ this far _beyond it?_

 _His feet crunch on the broken glass and loose stone fragments that coat the road like gravel._

 _Mara looks up, her eyes incandescent with rage. Her arms are curled around Nathan's bloodied form. He's still breathing - Duke catches the movement and can't breathe himself for an instant, as he realises. William is running up behind Mara. The remnant of the Guard are regrouping to come out in challenge. The shit is about the hit the fan in even bigger ways and Duke is slap bang in the middle of_ everyone's _crossfire, staring, but right now he can do nothing else._

 _Mara hisses the threat between her teeth, "If he dies, I will destroy this town_ completely _and start my empire anew."_

 _William falls on his knees beside her, hands reaching out to Nathan, joining Mara in holding him. His hand touches Nathan's cheek. Nathan both flinches and yearns into the touch. "Hold in there, buddy. We're gonna get you help."_

 _Duke doesn't know what the_ fuck _he's seeing, and can't reconcile it with what he thought he was seeing four days ago._

 _Mara and William gather Nathan between them. "If he dies..." she starts again, eyes burning into Duke. He can't imagine what she'd be doing to him if she didn't have her arms and her attention occupied._

 _"Yeah, yeah," Duke grunts, "insert scary threats here..." He holds out his hands. There's blood all over Nathan, red and alarming, but it's just what he needs to get him out of here faster than anyone else can, and maybe they can salvage something from this._ "Give him to me _. I know where to go."_


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Ungh." Nathan grunts and moves sluggishly, pushing at Mara's shoulders. It's weak at first. A shudder runs through his body and she feels it keenly where she's pressed against him. Then he squirms, hips bucking against William's hold, but not to push back in submission. He's fighting them. Mara leans in and trails her hands down his neck, trails kisses in their wake, but still he fights. " _Off_ ," he gasps, one hand flailing behind him at William, the other wedged between his body and Mara's. "Get off. You said you wouldn't."

William leans forward and tries to croon in his ear as he strokes his back, but gets an elbow in the throat. He automatically tightens his hold around Nathan's waist. The restraint makes Nathan's body go utterly rigid. Mara still has his face in her hands, and focuses all her power upon soothing him. Nathan's eyes glaze and he's so, so close to going under, but still fighting. Abruptly, the encounter sours for her and she removes the force of her touch.

"You said that you'd try." William realises his mistake and releases his hold, rubbing his hand over Nathan's back in comforting circles while Nathan heaves in breaths that shift his whole rib cage. He's still a bit stiff, but he accepts the less invasive touch, eyes sliding back to watch the other man warily.

"You _said_ I'd have a choice. Not now. I can't do this now."

Mara sighs. She lets him roll off the bed, coming up on his feet with his back to them. His hands scrape through his hair. There are still burn scars on the backs of his elbows and the palms of his hands, odd patches elsewhere, but it is his singed hair that offends her the most. The balder patches have a new fuzz on them, now, and she keeps trying to brush the longer parts to hide them. Though that, too, makes him squirm, and left to his own devices he'll scrub his hands through with a total disregard for the damage, as he's doing now.

"We just want to love you," William says, plaintively.

Nathan huffs brusque laughter, showing them the back of his patchy head. "That's one word for it."

Mara rolls her eyes. It takes more effort than it should to summon the appropriate contempt. "Leave him," she orders William. "It's too early for fights. Let Nathan go, and we will share the morning between the two of us."

Nathan shoots her a grateful look over his shoulder, grabs his pants and pulls them on, then scoots out of their bedchamber. Mara and William regard each other, saying much without any words at all, affirming the discontent in each others' minds. Eventually Mara musters aloud, "He will come around in time."

"Time?" William teases, moving a fingertip down her face, replacing a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"...Of the two ways we can do this, I still find myself... uneasy... with the more direct." She meets his gaze knowing he will say something. This is not her. This is exactly the sort of thing that his return was supposed to avoid, that disposing of Nathan once and for all was supposed to avoid. They went through that pain, and then Nathan _came back_ , and now they are unable to go through it again.

William says it: "You've softened."

Mara starts to shake her head and glares at him instead. She lifts his chin with her hand to meet his eyes. "It is only that he's already so completely _mine_. I damaged him already, which was careless and foolish. Why should I risk he might be harmed by this, when we will have him either way?"

William's eyebrows lift gently. He kisses her. She feels his frustration about Nathan's unresponsiveness - the coldness made all the more hurtful by his love for Nathan, which is _hers_ , which is Audrey Parker's. Their memories of Nathan returning love for _them_... her and him both... have their origin in Audrey _,_ but feel current and very real all the same. Deeper beneath it, she feels her and William's dual disquiet at the changes wrought in them. But she refuses to acknowledge it.

"He will learn," Mara promises. "He simply needs a period to adjust. I don't think he had made love with a man before. I don't think he has made love with very many people at all before."

"Mm," William grunts, and presses his face into her neck, sliding his wet mouth from there down to her breast, where she feels it engulf a nipple. She inhales and arches sharply as the scrape of teeth unexpectedly makes the soft sensations more intense. "Let me try to win him around." He shows her what he's thinking and she smiles. "Who'd have thought we'd be screwing one of Hansen's line one day?"

No, and it _is_ strange. Mara had always thought it a fittingly ironic Trouble for such a violent, brutish man - Max and his original ancestor. She had never thought about the curse in the context of her own immunity. Had not particularly thought of the ways in which a man might grow to fit that curse without being, necessarily, an unfeeling thug.

...Not that Nathan isn't _also_ capable of that. Mara smiles to herself as she wraps her arms and legs around William. He has _just_ the skill sets and attitudes she needs. She only must surmount his recalcitrance and his ongoing schemes against her, and he will be more than sufficiently suited for her uses to justify her attachment to him.

She may be stuck with him, thanks to Howard's meddling and Audrey's memories, but that doesn't mean she can't be practical about this.

* * *

When they're finished, they rise. Mara has been enjoying these lazy mornings. These early days have been like a holiday: rest and recuperation, after the rigors of the void, and chance to get used to each others' rhythms again after their separate exiles before that. Settling in the complication that is _Nathan_. Soon they must up their game. Very soon... For now, she pads in her bare feet through the elaborately tiled halls. The colourful tiles are cold, smooth and satisfying against her skin. She curls her toes against them with each step.

She told Nathan to _build a castle_. It was a silliness, a challenge tossed off carelessly, another way of playing with him. The wonder of him succeeding is endlessly amusing to her now, though it took nearly forty-eight hours and the process tried her patience severely at the time. Until things slowly began to materialize.

He is stubborn, stubborn, _stubborn_... Never give him impossible tasks to do, or at least... be aware of how much time could be involved in waiting while he refuses to yield the idea of fulfilling them. That is another trait that can be amusing and useful. He did sleep for most of the twenty-four hours after making the castle, however, which was also annoying.

It's not a big castle, which is just as well thus far, as there are only three of them and she is yet to acquire any other... she decides she'll call them 'staff' for the sake of argument. Later, they may need to expand and improve. The castle's outward design is more ornamental than functional, though Mara would have pegged Nathan as one to be more influenced by fortresses of war than Disney movies. At least he made the walls from dark, brooding stone - gabbro granite, black and white mottling to dark grey from a distance too far to see all the intricate patterns drawn by individual crystals. The walls are also thick and the stonework exact and smooth, the doors and windows secure, and she feels reassured that they are safe here from attack. If Dwight and the rest of HPD and Haven's forces would _dare_.

That they have any electrical power is down to Nathan's ingenuity with the generator, but it's not reliable and apparently he didn't have too much confidence in it when he created it because he still added in log fires, candles and lamps, and an archaic kitchen range that set Mara's older false memories spiralling wildly.

That they have any supplies, on the other hand, is down to William going grocery shopping. Which they will need to do again, soon.

Nathan hasn't _made_ anything since the castle. Mara did not previously believe it was possible to burn a Trouble out, but he does strike her as a prime candidate to manage that, if anyone is block-headed enough to make the discovery.

She finds him in the kitchen at the range. A pile of patchy golden and black pancakes are keeping warm on a hot plate. "Help yourself," he says, not looking up. The curve of his back is wounded and hostile. Out of perversity she sets a hand on it and trails her fingers down the indentation of his spine. He squirms away from her touch and she slips her arm around his waist, refusing to allow his escape. They have done this before. She has a moment of double vision as she kisses his neck and feels him melt back against her.

"I'm sorry," she coos next to his ear.

"You're not," he rasps. "It's just easier for you to say the words and pretend." His body is still limp and unresisting against her. Lately, he has taken to pursuing victory by submission. It's not the strategy she would have expected him to take.

Mara lets him go, disgruntled, and takes a plate. She picks out the less burned pancake offerings before heading to the big wooden kitchen table, slamming plate and chair and herself around far noisier than necessary. She hears him snort.

It's more fitting for him to cook than herself or William, but it's not ideal either. Primarily because she would rather eat well. Pancakes, he's at least usually adept at, but _not_ cooked over naked flame, which he hasn't yet much got a handle on. It's good enough for the moment, and Mara suspects he accepts the more lowly tasks she gives him without complaint because he'd rather be busy than having to think about _where_ he is and the rest of his role in all of this. It's only the interesting things she gives him to do that he complains about.

"We are going into town today," she tells him, on that subject, raising her voice over the hiss of the fire and scrape of his spatula. "I need to go shopping for a number of things."

Nathan tries not to react, but he stiffens minutely. He tenses much more a moment later when William walks in.

"Did you hear?" Mara asks William.

"Shopping, yes." William pokes at the pile of pancakes and takes from the burnt ones Mara left without particularly sifting through them. "Honey or syrup would be a plus. Complement the smoky flavour of the charcoal." He slides a hand briefly across Nathan's bare ribs above a jutting hip as he makes his way to the table, but this time Nathan saw the touch coming and makes himself like stone, set and unresponsive as his body meets it.

"I was thinking more along the lines of a cook," Mara says, not without amusement.

"That, too."

"We'll need more than that, soon. I have other projects to work upon. Quck experiments are diverting, but I should prefer to put more time and _depth_ into my gifts."

William's smile broadens.

Nathan slaps the spatula down and turns. "How are you planning to persuade anyone else to come back here?" he snaps. As she rolls her head and her eyes and ticks up the edges of her mouth in a nasty smile, he angrily grabs one of the remaining pancakes and bites into it. Leaving the first jammed into his mouth, he grabs two more direct from the griddle, shoves it aside out of the flames, then stalks from the room, leaving behind him the curt words, "I'm going to get dressed."

Mara doesn't have a link with Nathan, but she can still practically _hear_ him feeling vulnerable clad only in the jeans that hang off his hips while both Mara and William are dressed.

William sits down opposite Mara and demonstrates his opinion of Nathan's departure with some amused eyebrow action.

Only tens of days ago he was the interloper in their midst, eminently disposable. Now they realise that they somehow need to live around him since they cannot live without him, _cannot_ dispose of him, and meanwhile he chafes and rankles between the two of them. It's hardly just the physical that creates a problem. Then again, the situation has its amusements as well as its irritations.

"Going to be interesting taking him into town," William says, keeping his voice low just in case Nathan is lingering to spy on them. "He's had time to think and recover, now. I don't think it's going to be like that first day. Are you still sure you can trust him to do as he's told around other people?"

Mara raises her eyebrows. "Because he does as he's told the rest of the time, clearly."

William chuckles and doffs an imaginary hat to her.

"He'll do as he pleases," Mara says firmly. "Somewhere in there, he must surely bear in mind that he also pleases to remain alongside _me_."

* * *

Their first port of call is Haven's hospital, and a secluded room where a patient lies, unreachable, locked in coma. Albert Hutton, 56 years old, was the victim of a road traffic accident two years ago. Brain scans indicate he's still in there, entirely cut off from the world.

"Hello, Albert," Mara says, smoothing her hand over his forehead and shifting the collar of his hospital gown aside to check her handiwork. The black imprint of her palm is dark against his chest. He was in every way perfect for the Trouble that she needed. "How are you doing today? Still keeping Haven safe for me?"

Nathan hangs at the door like a left-behind coat. He looks dark and scarred, and is more out of place among the population of the town than either Mara or William. A nurse comes to object to their presence and he turns her away, flashing the outside of his police badge, which is as battered and worn as he is, but not identifying himself. The nurse leaves again. Mara snorts quietly and is pleased. So many things about Nathan are a useful accident.

He's also twitchy and unhappy, and skittishness positively radiates from him. He's hyper-alert, trying to look at both the corridor and her at the same time. Oh, he is afraid she might _hurt_ someone, and so ready to put himself between her and those innocents should the need arise. Mara tosses him a nasty smile, remembering his reaction to the things they did on other worlds to beings that didn't even resemble humans. "Don't worry. I'm not going to kill anyone today. I told you, we're just shopping."

"For people," Nathan says darkly.

Mara tips her shoulder. "I might sow a Trouble or two. I meant it about the cook."

" _I_ can cook," Nathan asserts. "You shouldn't bring anyone else into this. Security at the castle-"

"Uh, no," William says. "And yes, we should. I'm sure you can keep enough of an eye on our new addition that they won't cause any mischief. Besides, you don't see yourself as a servitor, surely, Nathan? You know you mean more to us than wearing you out needlessly with trivia like that." His tone is jibing and Nathan looks about ready to explode. There's a moment where William's eyes do flicker in alarm, but it passes, and no fists fly on this occasion.

"You can Trouble me again. Something... I don't know, some create-food-from-nowhere Trouble. You've done just about everything else!"

Mara casts him a look of derision. This much he should have learned by now. "I need workable raw material, Nathan - and a tip: no-one _volunteers_. Stop trying to look after everyone else. You're supposed to look after _us_."

"Duke volunteered," Nathan counters.

"Oh, yes, _Duke_." She pins his eyes a moment and studies his reaction across the still body on the hospital bed, intrigued by the thought of pushing this particular button. "He is an adequate chef."

" _No_ ," Nathan snaps instantly.

"What's the matter? Is that jealousy? You don't like the idea that you might have to share my attentions with yet someone else? Or... is it more than that? Don't tell me that you actually _care_ I might hurt him? Not _Duke_."

That flummoxes him, and he casts about, then his face clears and he decides that she's playing with him and turns his back on the room, retreating several steps, taking up a true guard position outside the door.

He's not wrong, anyway, about the security issues, and considering that Audrey Parker also cared about Duke, it would just compound the problems she already has to bring him into the mix. Duke has a useful Trouble, but he is not so easy to play, not so readily manipulated by the face she wears, and not so wed to emotion over logic. Duke _might_ kill her if he believed it necessary and she was careless enough to allow him opportunity. Nathan never would.

No. She needs someone more controllable than Duke. Which is a shame, because he can definitely cook, and if she could only trust him and his volatile Trouble he would make a fine addition to her House.

Mara lifts her hand from Albert Hutton, having read his notes and checked his status for herself, being satisfied that the town is still healthy and secure. She wants her creations isolated from the outside world. No intrusions upon her domain. The nature of _this_ power is such that, in a short time, the world outside will have forgotten that Haven ever existed, and nobody will think to come here, to investigate, to pry. It will provide her with time and an ideal launchpad to develop her Troubles before taking on the wider world.

Nathan looks back over his shoulder upon hearing her move and his face shows cautious relief when he steps aside to allow her out of the door. He hesitates long enough to make sure William is following, then sets a fast pace out of there. Soon they're back in more occupied areas of the hospital again.

In the hospital, his patchy hair and scarred hands attract less attention than they do back out on the street. On the plus side, without most of his eyebrows and some of his hair, it's much harder for people to recognise him as Nathan Wuornos, because his identity is far from inconspicuous.

There's an air of muffled panic on the streets of Haven - muffled because, as always, the direst things are never talked about here. Even though the Troubles are finally and inarguably out in the open, intruding upon everyone's lives. It cannot possibly have escaped the citizens' attention that they can't leave the town.

Mara remembers - _Audrey_ remembers, but it's Mara doing the remembering, she has to be firm with herself on that - Haven within a snow globe and impenetrable wall. (She remembers watching Nathan vanish and how helpless and horrible that made her feel, but has only contempt for her alter-ego being so weak.) This is not quite like that; some things come in, like air drifts in and out of the lungs of the comatose man: air itself, of course, and other supplies from the outside, lest the shops empty. Television signals because otherwise Mara shudders to think how she might face off against the suddenly un-anaesthetised populace, stripped of distraction.

Necessary things come in. Nothing goes out. Haven is locked off, unable to access the outside world, to enter it or communicate with it. Slowly, the magic will make the other ends of any ties people have on the outside fade and Haven will be invisible forever.

Or as long as Albert Hutton continues to sleep and breathe. By the doctors' best guesses that should be plenty of time to allow her to think of something better - or to no longer need the wall at all. By that time, she should have expanded from controlling one small island out to the whole of Haven and be ready to take on the world.

No-one notices Mara as she strolls through town, William on her arm. If they look at anyone, it's Nathan. Very few of them recognise him, trailing this happy couple like a shadow. The reactions of those who do recognise him are mixed. Shock, from all of them, in the recognition - his physical state _looks_ somewhat grim, even if Mara went to some lengths to ensure he is fixed and reassure herself that he is fine in every way except, annoyingly, for the cosmetic. Annoying because, damn it, he was so very pretty, and that part is entirely her fault. After the initial shock clears he gets pitying studies of the harsh changes in him, or from some diehards fierce hate. The hate amuses Mara particularly. If the recognition is coupled with actual knowledge, they'd be forced to deal with the person, and anyone else who was witness, but that hasn't happened yet today.

Mara is most intensely annoyed by the people who try to initiate conversation with him. They interrupt her morning, causing herself and William to be sidetracked; causing them to become more noticeable and forcing them to dally around for Nathan.

Mara shoots dagger glares at him, and he is very quick to send the people away, bordering on rudeness a few times. He offends them to keep them from suffering her displeasure, and looks after them mournfully when they depart.

At least she gains some pleasure from those mopey faces.

Mara hits the clothes stores first. It's Haven, so that is a severely limited prospect to begin with, but she manages to find a few items that are acceptable to her without shouting too loud to Audrey, Lexie, Lucy, Sarah, or any the rest of her entourage that she _does not want to be_. Obviously, it gets easier to avoid the favoured fashions of her alter-egos the further back the personalities go.

Another goal of the morning was to re-outfit William and Nathan more to her taste. William accepts it fondly. Nathan _stares_ at her like he can't quite believe it, and puts his foot down: "No."

Mara _will not_ have him remain in faded, battered jeans and those hooded monstrosities he favours of late. After various arguing back and forth, she demands, "Is this _really_ the stand you want to take?"

He yanks the bundle of clothing from her hands and slams the door of the fitting room behind him.

For revenge at his contrariness, she waits until she sees his pants around his feet under the changing room door, then gestures silently to William, who holds down the store attendant while Mara sets hand to her throat and Troubles her. Nathan hears the screaming, but can only run out too late, yelling as he stumbles with his jeans held halfway up his legs.

"Damn you!" He grabs for Mara. He's down a hand and off-balance, and it's easy to catch and twist one of his reaching fingers, to jab _his_ throat. He drops, possibly more in surprise at the sudden and unfamiliar sensation than the severity of it, and only just catches himself against the counter.

"It's only a _little_ Trouble," Mara says, stepping back into William's comforting solidity. "I still need _practice_ , you see. You're so much more important to me, and I've tried far too many half-baked and barely functional gifts on you."

Nathan and the store attendant both hold their necks and stare. Nathan's mouth moves and his throat jumps, but it produces nothing but a squeak and a hiss. Ah... his voice was already damaged, she remembers too late. She needs to be more careful of that in the future. He picks himself up, lips pressed tightly together, and pulls up his jeans again. When he speaks next, broken noise comes out that approximates words, and he addresses them to the girl. "Stay calm. Find the Guard." He flashes his tattoo. "People with this mark. They'll help you."

"Oh, really, Nathan?" Mara _laughs_ at him. He spent six months on the run from those people and now he's advocating others trust in their help? And his expression is so _serious_ , so _solemn_. "Are you going to start posting recruitment flyers? Don't worry. Her Trouble's a nothing." Inconvenient at worst. Mara hopes she likes the horrible yellowish colour of the shirt she's wearing, since she'll be wearing it a lot more once the Trouble kicks in. Is that sort of outfit supposed to be any sort of advertisement for the store?

"Bitch," the assistant bleats, the hand mark on her throat jumping. She darts behind the desk away from them as Mara's eyes coldly return to her.

" _Mara_ ," Nathan growls. He slams his hand on the wall, and abruptly, there's a shadow-policeman, body and uniform featureless and blank, standing between Mara and the girl.

"Hah!" she crows. "Your _things_ aren't a threat to me. They're linked to _you_ , and _you_ can't hurt me."

"Funny thing," he says. "I'm not sure. I just tell them what to guard. I can't control what they do while guarding it."

The attendant is looking more nervous of the shadow policeman than Mara, Nathan or William. Mara is not entirely unmoved, either. It's an unsettling thing, mindless, soulless, created by resentment and jealousy and the yearning for lost power. She steps backward, not missing a beat in her laughter. "I hope that isn't taking away from the security of my castle." She turns for the door of the shop.

She hears his relieved release of breath, and sees a reflection in the glass frontage as William leans over and punches Nathan's arm. It's a peculiarly male gesture. He apologises inside her head, but she knows he only meant it as a celebration of courage, and it's not like Nathan appreciated it anyway. A bell rings as Mara exits the shop.

" _William_ ," she reminds sharply, turning back and noticing something missing. William quickly turns around and grabs the clothes that Nathan was supposed to try on and hasn't, as well as the ones William already did. He shoves them into the hands of Nathan, who pulls a face, but apparently decides again not to pick that fight on top of the rest.

Nathan makes a quelling gesture toward the shadow policeman. "It will disappear in a few minutes."

Mara wonders if he realises his creation serves the dual function of facilitating their escape without stirring up any attention for their non-payment for the clothes. Probably not. William, who actually had money to pay for what they bought, sends the equivalent of a shrug through her thoughts.

"Come on." Mara seizes Nathan's arm as he exits the shop last. "We still need food, _before_ the fool girl alerts the Guard or the police to our presence."

"You didn't have to Trouble her," Nathan starts.

"No, I didn't," Mara agrees, smirking.

"You..."

William grips his shoulder. "Don't. We'll get the food and clear out, okay?"

Nathan doesn't shake him off. Maybe it's surprise. More likely it's the memory of what happened the last time things between the three of them outright exploded into violence, and the events inside the shop came very close. Mara realises that her own hands are trembling from reaction. She fists them angrily.

"The food," she says, "and the cook." She spots a store coming up on the left of the street. "And my hair."

" _What_?" Nathan's incredulous and even William looks taken aback. He asks in her head if it's really the time.

Mara has a few doubts herself as she looks at _The Cutting Edge_ and knows that the woman inside will greet her as 'Audrey', but now that the idea has taken root, she can't abide the thought of Lexie's messy, streaky locks adorning her head for a moment longer.

She heads for the door, tossing behind her, "Find a way to keep occupied without fighting. And don't wander too far. I don't trust Duke, Vince and Dwight still loose out there."

She should have killed them. That she didn't is something else she's blaming on Audrey Parker.

Behind her, as she ascends the step and pushes back the door of the hairdressers, she hears Nathan say to William in his best bitch voice, "There was a time when I thought the two of you had an equal relationship."

"Says you," she hears William crack back at him, with perfectly unruffled cheer.

* * *

There's not a lot much more dismaying than being relegated to waiting tapping his heels with William while Evil Incarnate gets its hair fixed. Nathan, still not quite believing it, stares at William for too long after Mara is out of sight before he can make himself drag his attention away. He isn't going to get any help or answers there.

William's grin still seems imprinted on Nathan's retina while he's facing the other way. He hears movement but isn't quick enough to avoid a 'comradely' pat on his shoulder that makes him squirm. William always makes sure to catch the stripe of skin above his collar where his clothes don't provide any protection. Nathan jerks his shoulder and swipes viciously backward with his elbow.

"Ah-ah." William steps back and waves a finger. "She said no fighting."

Nathan spits, " _You're_ her pet, not me."

"And yet, here you are."

"I'm here for _Audrey_."

"Heh-" William's eyebrows raise and he reaches in to pat Nathan's face. Grabbing his wrist isn't much better, in terms of unwanted sensation. William's wearing a short sleeved wine-coloured T-shirt with a button up collar that he picked up in the shop and every reachable part of his arm is bare. Nathan lets him go in disgust.

"You know," William says, retreating to what passes as a non-threatening distance, though his personal bubble is annoyingly tight, "we really should try to bond. We're both _men_ with... _mannish interests_. You watch sports? We're not going to get _her_ to watch sports. But between the two of us, hey, that's a stand we could take." His eyes cloud and he looks ponderously across the street. "We need a TV."

"Mara doesn't care about TV," Nathan sneers.

"Yes, but I'll carry it, you can take the food, and if it doesn't slow us down, she won't stop us." William's eyes seem to have got bigger and clearer and _blue-er_ , and how pleading they are is freakin' disturbing.

"You're crazy." Nathan shifts on his feet.

"Weren't you the one who's not a pet?" Without warning, William starts jogging away toward the electronics store across the street.

"The electrics don't even work!" Nathan yells after him, and curses as he takes one last assessing glance at Mara through the hairdresser's window, makes his choice, and sprints after William. It isn't that the other man is less likely to do mischief than Mara is, but he's pretty damn sure he's more likely to be able to _stop_ the mischief that William wants to do. And he'll still be able to see anyone coming through the windows of the store.

Ten minutes later they're stepping out again, William practically bouncing on his feet with a relatively small - in the scheme of things - flatscreen TV cradled in his arms. He paid for it honestly, though Nathan has no particular hope that he originally got hold of any of that money honestly.

"We might have to call up the guys to help with the shopping," William says, reconsidering. He actually pulls a sympathetic face at Nathan's unhappy nonverbal response. "Hey, can your guard-things carry stuff?"

"Uh." Nathan is forced to admit that William's goons are probably the more reliable option. But he'll never get used to the way they leer at him.

"Sorry, then. I know how you love them so." William puts the TV down at his feet and twiddles his thumbs. "We could really use a car."

Nathan _has_ a car, but it's far too recognisable to think about fetching it. He feels on-edge and visible enough just being in town. Besides, Duke's probably sitting on the Bronco after this morning's performance... In wait at his home, hoping he'll show to try and take something back. Nathan hopes he _is_. It's a far wiser plan and more comforting thought than Duke bringing Jennifer to Mara's island in the small hours of the morning.

If he _made_ a car, that would likely draw even more attention. Things have a tendency to be... not so polished, once he gets into the realm of metal and engines or electrics. He resists pointing out that they might as well steal a car, for now, but if it will get them away from other people faster, he's all for that plan. Once they are back on the island, they'll be safe and guarded, and he doesn't give much of a damn if he's seen and reported. It isn't primarily the danger of being in town that makes him wary and fearful - even self-conscious, scarred and damaged as he now is, and more a pariah than before.

He stands and uneasily watches the beginning of a commotion outside the clothes shop they left earlier, just about still visible at the furthest bend of the road. They should have put more distance between themselves and the scene of that crime. Well, they were going to, before Mara decided to stop and _have her hair done_.

"William," he alerts his companion, reluctantly.

"Oh, look there," William says happily. "Some entertainment."

" _No_ ," Nathan snaps. "No 'entertainment'. Go get the food." He thrusts the shopping list at the other man's hand. "I'll bring the TV and Mara."

"You are _so_ little fun. You do know she definitely won't be happy if you interrupt her with only half her 'do' done?" William's smirk is growing.

"If you ever want to fuck me again, you'll fucking humour me," Nathan growls back. William _pouts_ , but it turns quickly into a mischievous little grin, which says that's _almost_ Nathan committing a promise, and then sets off at a smart pace, a bounce in his step. "Meet at the boat!" Nathan hisses after him. He curses and leans down to grab the TV. It's just about small enough to hold under one arm, but without being able to feel it and gauge the shift of its balance in his grip, he's still afraid he'll drop it.

He shoves open the door to the hairdresser's with his shoulder. Mara has stuff all over her head and gives him a seething glower. "This had better not be something that involves making me move!"

Nathan sets the TV down on a waiting chair and positions himself in the shadows, where he can see out of the window but not easily be seen by anyone looking in. "We're all right just now. William's gone to get the food, so we have to wait for him anyway." He has no doubt William will screw it up. His last visit into town, while Nathan was still recovering from castle-building, had more than its fair share of what-the-fuck? moments when it came to unpacking. Best case scenario he just hands the shopping list over and lets Marty and Carol at the grocery store box it all up. He probably _will_ pull out Creepy and Lurchy to carry the shopping. "I didn't want us standing waiting in the open."

"How's it going, Detective Wuornos?" asks the hairdresser, walking in from the back... and her recognition of him is a jolt, until he realises she can only see him in profile, mostly silhouetted by the harsh lighting and the window. "Hey, Audrey, I guess that stuff can come off now, if your partner's here already." ...And of course, she recognises him because he's with _Audrey_.

Nathan thinks the woman's name is Angie. She has red hair pulled thickly into a pile on the top of her head, defying gravity. To Nathan's horror, she walks past Audrey and peeks out of the window, following the direction of his own prior gaze.

"Oh, I-I'm fine." He tries to step further into shadow, position himself to hide the scars. Mara is glaring at him behind the woman's back. "Keeping an eye on a couple of my people down the street. Should go out and join them, if Audrey's ready." He makes the last three words the strongest hint he can while remaining polite.

"You can't work all the time, Detective," she says. "I'm sure your officers have it in hand." To his relief, she goes back to Mara without giving him more than a dazzled smile, and starts rinsing Mara's hair. Nathan is shocked to see that when the ooze rinses away, the hair left behind dries to straight, blonde locks. It's not _exactly_ the way Audrey's was for the longest time, but it's a lot closer than it has been since she came back as Lexie. His heart hurts inside his chest, even though no-one is touching him to make him feel it do so.

"Stop staring," Mara says irritably, her eyes turning hard.

He turns and checks out of the window again. Dwight and Stan are coming down the street. They're looking around themselves, but they aren't checking inside all the stores. Nathan and Mara might get away without incident. Then, Nathan swallows as he watches them go into the electronics store.

Angie has just set scissors to Mara's head when Nathan grabs her hand and says, "We need to go."

"No, we don't," Mara snaps, slapping Nathan's hand away. "Continue. _Now_."

Angie blinks in startlement at the odd behaviour, and Nathan stands, hands fisted and body vibrating as he watches shadows move in the semi-distant electronics store through the filter of two sets of windows. He remembers William making a joke about women and hair while they were buying the TV, and hopes the assistant won't remember it, won't point Dwight and Stan directly to where they are.

It's really not himself and Mara that he's worried about.

The scissors leave Mara's head. The hair looks fine to Nathan. He strides across to whisk the bib away. "You don't need to do anything else, do you?" he asks as he pulls Mara up, not bothering to look at her expression.

"I don't _need_ to..." Angie begins. "It'll look better if-"

"It looks great," Nathan says curtly to both women.

"Never mind!" Mara shoves Nathan off but gets up. "We need to leave." She can also see Dwight and Stan starting across the street toward them. "Do you have a back door? It's a... a Haven Thing."

Angie points and opens her mouth - perhaps to ask for money - but then apparently thinks better of it. Mara charges down the narrow corridor indicated, through rooms a lot scruffier than the hair studio at the front, until they find a door leading out into the yard at the back. They stumble into the open air together. Mara's fingertips dig into Nathan's arm with a focused violence that says she doesn't appreciate the interruption no matter what his reason.

"You bought a _television_?" she hisses at him. He managed to remember to pick it up in his hurry.

"William did!" He has no idea what Angie will do when Dwight and Stan come into the store and start asking questions, but it's better if they're out of sight fast no matter what. He pulls her along by her grip on his arm, heading through the scruffy spaces behind the shops and a row of unkempt yards to cut back down toward the boat.

* * *

William is waiting for them with two large cardboard boxes already loaded onto the boat. Creepy and Lurchy are fishing over the side of the private jetty, which belongs to a house that's empty, now, since the owner fell to the crying baby Trouble. William jumps up when he sees them. "Oh, good, you remembered the TV!" He stops and double-takes. "That colour looks _great_ on you, honey." He leans in and kisses the new, blonder, more severe Mara.

Nathan wonders if she did it mainly to torment him. He thrusts the TV into William's hands and says irritably, "Send those things away."

Creepy and Lurchy give him sour looks as they dissipate and return to William's box in response to their master's faux helpless shrug. Nathan shudders. What disturbs him most is how he can't decide how real they actually are. Their resentment of him certainly looks as real as their sneering mockery of him feels.

The irony is they're still less disturbing than the creatures he now creates.

Nathan gets into the boat last, untying it from the jetty and jumping, and they're off. Mara's blonde hair bobs in the wind, shorter and straighter than Audrey's, still painful to observe. They are well out into the sea before figures appear on the shore at a run and stumble to a halt along the empty jetty.

Nathan stares across the waves to Dwight. It's too far between them to meet his eyes, but for all intents and purposes he _feels_ like that's what's happening. He stares; Dwight stares back. Judging him, Nathan thinks, the same way that Duke did. They have given up on him, given up on Audrey. None of them believe he can get her back, not this way nor any other. They all think he's gone mad. None of them believe that he's still trying his best to save Audrey, save _everyone_.

Mara made the Troubles... _She can take them away_. He's seen her do it.

He doesn't need Dwight's approval to keep trying. It stings far worse that he doesn't have Duke's, but then that's an old sting. Duke never had much approval for him.

"We need a better boat," William grumbles to Mara. "Also, we need a car. Nathan and I decided. What's the point having a castle if we're scraping for everything else?"

Mara looks at Nathan. "I'm still trying to think of a way to make _you_ into something that can fly us around." She shifts her nastily gleaming eyes to William. "Does a dragon count as sufficient style, darling?"

" _No_ ," growls Nathan. It's a word he uses a lot, usually with predictably dismal results.

"Mara," William says, with a slightly long-suffering tone. "I've been doing this as long as you have. He will _never_ fly. We need another human. Luckily for all of us... I _didn't_ forget the cook."

When William yanks the tarpaulin cast innocuously over a seat aside to reveal a young woman, terrified, bound and gagged, Nathan knows he should have stayed with William.


	3. Chapter 2

**Appendix A** : This exists in the form of a cartoon at Livejournal, Deviantart and AO3, because I was asked at this point in the story for a reminder of what Nathan's Troubles were now. Here's the text version.

TROUBLE 1: **Inability to feel**. Mara could take away his original Trouble... if she wanted to.  
TROUBLE 2: **Force-fields**. Nathan's first extra Trouble was created by Mara before they entered the void, to protect them there.  
TROUBLE 3: **Nathan** ** _needs_** **Mara**. Mara used Nathan's love for Audrey to create an almost physical addition to her body, to keep him in line.  
TROUBLE 4: **Find! "** ** _You're good at finding things, Detective..._** **"** The ability to hone in on an object or a person's location.  
TROUBLE 5: **"Create" Trouble**. Mara made this Trouble to provide them with tools and supplies to survive the void. It draws upon Nathan's -secret- crafty hobbies.  
(TROUBLE 6: **"I destroy everything I see!"**. Mara made this Trouble in haste and was forced to remove it as impractical. It immolated every living thing Nathan laid eyes upon.)  
TROUBLE 7: **Shadow policemen**. After their return from the void, Mara enabled Nathan to create an army to watch over the castle and island.  
TROUBLE ?: Mara may have experimented giving Nathan other Troubles during their time on the island that did not perform to her satisfaction.

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

Dwight bluntly heads off Duke's attempt to approach him at the police station with. "Mara was in town, so I really don't have time to deal with whatever other problems you have right now."

There's still the barest hint of a question in that, and Dwight is obviously only _hopeful_ that more Troubles aren't what Duke brings. Duke blinks. "She was _here_?" Because only this morning, they were _there_ , and behind him, Jen raises a shocked little hand to her mouth. "Was Nathan-?"

"Of course he was," Dwight snaps. "She takes him everywhere. As far as I can tell, he's the one who made sure she got clean away." He pauses to collect his patience. "William, too. Didn't learn anything from that except that the man doesn't know how to grocery shop. And that he got addicted to daytime soaps after his escape from Hell."

"What did they do?" Duke asks, fearfully. He wants to believe that Nathan is still in this because he's got a plan - even a fucked up damn Nathan-plan - and genuinely thinks he can help, but he's _seen_ Mara touch Nathan and Nathan cave to her every whim. He doesn't really want to hear about what Nathan might have done this time in the name of Mara.

Dwight sighs and waves them inside his office, entering and shutting the door after. Jen perches on a visitor chair. Duke opts to stand. Dwight says, "She kidnapped one woman, Troubled another. The Trouble turns fabric a funny rust colour. Who even knows why? She called it 'practicing'. The woman said she thought Nathan was trying to help but it sounds like he scared the crap out of her anyway. Some creepy shadow creature that looks like a police officer."

Duke grimaces. "Yeah. I've seen them."

"She said he was trying to help," Dwight repeats, with a certain note in the repetition. "But I do _not_ like that this thing apparently came from the inside of his head."

Duke doesn't either, but Troubles have produced some nasty crap from purer individuals than Nathan in the past. "We need to help him. Mara's got him all screwed up, and who even knows what's going on there with William." William who Nathan can also touch. His mouth dries up at the idea of relaying what he saw to Dwight. "They _took_ a girl?"

"We think so. Went missing around the time they were in town. We know Mara needs _people_ , so we're hoping she's been taken rather than turned into something or-" He doesn't finish that. "The other woman... the shadow thing disappeared eventually. Nathan told her to go to the Guard for help, but she called the police." He snorts softly. "She's going to have to get a new job. Damn Mara, screwing with people's lives. We got close enough to see them, but no dice. Nathan grabbed Mara and ran her down to the shore. They left by boat."

"It might be just as well," Jen says. "He probably didn't want to fight, right? Not _you_. Not his old officers. I mean, _Mara_ would probably be pretty happy to fight. Mara _loves_ leaving a trail of chaos in her wake. And, hey, it's not like Nathan _can't_ fight, with those creepy shadow things and the forcefields. He said he was dangerous."

Dwight stops and stares, then stands, looming over them, placing his hands on the desk. "He _said_?"

"He said he was too dangerous to come back and live among regular people," Duke adds. "He's still trying to protect us, in whatever misguided, Nathan-y way his brain works. That's assuming it _does_ work, which lately I'm thinking not so much, and yeah." He swallows, discomforted by the changes in Dwight's expression. "We saw him. This morning, early... before all of this."

Dwight commits to an expression: annoyance. "You went out to her island."

"Freakin' castle. Yeah." He wonders if Dwight's belligerence is still a hangover from Mara and her entourage forcing him to fix Nathan. For Mara to be the enemy and yet continue to turn up and use him as a handy tool whenever the situation requires it must severely suck. Duke is still really glad that Dwight fixed Nathan. Duke doesn't know what happened to him, but when he first showed up out of the void, his body looked a wreck. Mara treats him as her personal arsenal, but if she's also using him for the purposes Duke witnessed, he'd have thought she'd want to keep him pretty.

Duke shudders. He _can't_ tell Dwight about that. On one level he wants to, because nothing could emphasize how much Nathan's swallowed to stay with Mara like a mattress liaison with William. But Nathan deserves to be left some dignity, and since Dwight didn't get to witness how Nathan reacted, cringing away from William's touch, he might only misinterpret it another way.

Dwight doesn't look in the mood to listen to anyone's defence of Nathan. "I told everyone to stay clear of the island."

Duke spreads his hands. "What makes everyone keep thinking I'm the type of person who follows orders?"

Jennifer snickers, but Dwight looks sour. "You're the type of person who's racked up more minor infringements than anyone else I've ever seen. I've noticed that since I took up this role."

"Yeah, and there are reasons for that, mainly _Nathan_! And... oh wait, yeah, Nathan again! You might have noticed he kind of had it in for me for a bunch of years there. And our boy has never been shy about throwing his position around to address personal grudges. My _boat_ has had parking tickets!"

The corner of Dwight's mouth curls upwards slightly despite his generally disapproving demeanour. "Okay, that I did notice... Laverne swears it was always affectionate, if that helps." His face twists and the curl of amusement swiftly disappears. "You need to give it up, Duke. I know Nathan was your friend. But he's in the enemy camp, and he's not coming back. It's my fault as much as anyone's - hanging a death sentence over someone's head doesn't lead to them making too many rational decisions."

"He's not-" Duke starts, and then gets ridden right over.

"I _bought_ his intentions when he went through the gate with Mara, alright? I could even buy that he could have been tricked into bringing her back. But he didn't have to stay with them after. Didn't have to keep helping her."

Duke groans and slaps his head, eying Dwight with mild offence. "Man, I don't know what's more disturbing. That Nathan's run off to be Mara's henchman or that you're playing _me_ in this conversation."

"Excuse me?" Dwight returns, forehead creasing.

"I just had this conversation! With Nathan! Because this conversation is the whole frickin' reason I went to _see_ Nathan!" Slamming his hands on the desk might be a bit _too_ animated, given the man-mountain he's talking to.

Jen purses her lips and nods soberly at his side. "It's not like we went out to get soaked and chilled at 4AM on a whim. We have better things to do at night. _That_ is not fun times."

"In fact," Duke says, biting the words off more because he doesn't like the pitch he's making than from anger at Dwight, though the distinction may not be clear on Dwight's end, "this conversation was the reason I wanted to see _you_. I'm finished with hanging about on this. Something needs to be done, and the sooner the better."

"That much we agree on." Dwight looks Duke up and down rather less sceptically than Duke is actually comfortable with if he stops to think about it. "You're planning to be the one to do it?"

"I called Vince, earlier. I _tried_ to call you, before I came here, but I'm guessing my lack of success with that was due to your fucked up morning." Duke can feel how the sticky spider-threads of this catching him up, cloying and inescapable. He doesn't want to be the guy that helps... No, hold that: he doesn't _not-want_ to help, when he knows the situation is dire and Troubles are rife, and his friends are in danger, and all the things at stake. But he definitely doesn't want to be _that guy_. Now, without even Audrey or Nathan's coattails to tag onto, without the excuse that, hey, it's their show, he's just the support... He honed his instincts to look out for number one better than this.

Except if Dwight, the Guard, Vince, the town... if _they_ lead the charge, Nathan becomes collateral, another enemy, something in the way.

Duke has to be _in_ this if he wants to save Nathan

"You called Vince?" Dwight presses forward, low and cautious. "You want the Guard in on this?"

"Hell, we need the biggest damn guns they've got. Nathan's fucking _arsenal of Troubles_ is going to be a bitch to get around, but there has to be something the Guard can bring to bear to match him."

"You plan to fight him?" Dwight exudes surprise, though his eyes remain suspicious. "I thought this was a rescue campaign."

"To save him, we're going to have to go through him." Duke doesn't like any of it, but that much is plain to see. "This Mara and William situation is... _so_ fucked up, Sasquatch. They treat him like... ungh, they treat him like _crap_ , and he'll fight for them. They made him a one-man-army! I wish there was some other way, but whatever we do, I can't see a way forward without putting Nathan down first. Alive, Dwight. _Alive_."

"You really think he's still worth saving?"

Jennifer makes a small sound of indignation.

Duke is a little surprised but gratified to hear it. "Of course I do!" He flails his arms. "That was - fuck you, Dwight. That much was always true."

"Then what's changed _now_?" Dwight's abrasive with impatience. "Why are you _here_ , Duke?"

"Now I think he _needs_ saving."

It shuts Dwight up for all of three seconds before he asks curtly, "And what about Audrey? Is this the same old game - _both_ of you chasing after some goddamn-?"

"Audrey's gone, man." The words are bitter and heavy on Duke's tongue as he shakes his head. "I had all the proof I needed of that today."

"What proof?" Dwight's not ready to tolerate any trace of evasiveness, but he can get over it, because there's no way Duke provides that answer.

"Personal shit. Hey! I _know_ Audrey, I _know_ Nathan, and I'm sure."

"Nathan's as sure she's still out there to save."

"Nathan's _wrong_ , and Dwight, seriously?" Duke lays out his palms. "You're going to check me on this? Nathan didn't get obliterated by an ancient evil entity lurking in the depths of his psyche, he's just being a _stubborn dick_. And I hate to burst any illusions you might've had, but he's _always_ been that."

Except that now Nathan believes Audrey's still salvageable and Duke knows she _is not_ , and this, _this_ forms the ground that they will be fighting over. He sees the understanding of that in Dwight's eyes, and feels his gut churn. Nathan already damned them all once, to save Audrey. If he believes she's still alive in Mara, there might not be any limit to what he'll do in Mara's defence, how far he'll go in the face of a direct attack.

Dwight forces it out into words, though the real question skirts around the edges, unwilling to fully venture out. "You're sure you want to do this?"

"I _have_ to do this. My Trouble - if I can get past his forcefields - if I can make him bleed - maybe I stand some chance of matching him. He won't want to hurt him. It might be-" He might be the only one left who could give Nathan pause, when it comes to a choice between defending what's left of Audrey. Not that Duke imagines he'd win that particular tip of the scales, but a pause might be enough to get a hit in. "I think I have a chance to take him alive. I just need the police and the Guard to take care of the rest."

"The forcefields," Jen says dubiously, "and the creepy evil freaky police officers." She's eying him with some uncertainty. She knew he wanted to get the police and the Guard involved to go after Nathan, but it hasn't exactly been phrased like this before. "He ran," she says, toeing one of her yellow pumps around in circles on Dwight's office floor. "He ran so hard to stop that thing, to save us. I'm sure Duke is right." She ducks her head away from Dwight's pulled-together brows and incredulity.

Duke ignores the askance of _What the fuck happened this morning_? writ on Dwight's face. "He says he's helping Mara because if he's by her side he can rein her in. I think he's fucked in the head if he dreams he has that much influence, but I still _believe him_. Dwight, buddy, come on... Are you going to help me get him away from her before this really does snap him for good?"

Dwight sighs and shakes his head, causing Jen to huff and start a protest, but he raises a hand, patting it down. "Okay, easy... Like I said, this... _Nathan_ is at least some part my fault. Those weeks after he first came back... I should have done more, or _different_."

"Whole town out to murder him whether it could end the Troubles or not? Wow, yes," Jen picks up with that air of righteous accusation she does really well. "We noticed that."

"I could use you on-side in this," Duke all but begs. "I need your support. HPD's support. The Guard aren't going to be taking any steps to spare Nathan's life at the end of this. I have _no idea_ where Vince stands anymore, and wouldn't trust it if he declared it. That gives me you guys, and _you_..."

 _You can heal_.

Understanding passes between them.

Dwight says, slowly, "I'm not even going to be able to be there if there're guns around. But I think I get your meaning." He grimaces. "I can't say I wouldn't rather pull something out of this disaster, too. And from a practical standpoint, if we've lost Audrey... Nathan can solve Troubles. Gained a few nifty tricks, even. If there's any chance at all he can be brought back to our side, that adds a pretty compelling bonus to keeping him breathing. There are people I can sell on that even now. We're desperate enough."

Duke lets out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. He wants to save Nathan, but since he's _not_ Nathan, and therefore actually aware that he can't take on the world single-handedly and hope to win, he needs help to do it. He has Jen's, of course, but the resource that's her book has been silent in recent weeks, and Jen isn't a fighter, and he's afraid every time he pulls her into one of these messes that this will be the time he gets her killed. And _he's_ the one who wants to save Nathan. She cares primarily because he does.

He's going to be walking a thin line through this, with the allies he's chosen. Dwight's good for his word, will help him with the Guard, but they can't control everyone among them still bearing a grudge against the man who stopped the Troubles from going away.

Who stands now beside the woman who inflicted the Troubles on the world in the first place, determined to _protect her_.

"Well, then," Dwight says, running a hand through his hair. "We'd better start getting our plans together before the next time Mara pays a visit."

* * *

It's late evening by the time they drift around to the island. William is excited and on a high about both the television and the cook. Nathan has lost every argument he pitched himself headlong into. He spent half an hour of the journey pinned in the bottom of the boat under arm lock by Lurchy, and the woman is still under the seat as they pull into their island cove. Moreover, Mara has been playing, and at least until their household's newest member has that Trouble under control, Mara gleefully gloats that the _last_ place Nathan wants her to be is back among the population of Haven.

Nathan absorbs bitterly the order to "give her the tour and initiation" and spends an hour comforting the freaking out Sophie. Then he spends another hour trying to persuade her to make their dinner as Mara wants, so that Mara doesn't do anything _else_ to her... a looming threat that does not exactly help with calming her down enough to function. Nathan ends up doing most of the cooking again. Eventually the mess he's making of it succeeds in leading Sophie to take over.

Unpacking the groceries, trying to get Mara's kitchen in order, he discovers at the very bottom of the last box that William bought eight frozen pizzas, which have all promptly defrosted. Nathan leaves Sophie cooking the formerly frozen things to put in the cool larder, and drags himself away to furnish some quarters for her in view of the night ahead.

He decides these should be, firstly, as far away from Mara and William as they can be, and placing them off the kitchens is a logical choice. Secondly, he wants them as comfortable as he can make them, as a man who admittedly understands he isn't the most comfort-oriented of individuals. He spends a long time wrestling again with his newly-uncooperative power to _create._ Making the castle burned something out in him that hasn't fully come back yet.

William, in a distraught and cranky mood, eventually pulls him away from his project. William's high about the TV lasted only until he plugged it in and discovered that even though the generator is cooperating tonight, they have a signal problem.

Nathan already emphasized to Sophie that the island was guarded and she should not try to get away; that with the Trouble Mara has given her, the danger to other people it represents, he _will_ stop her if she tries to leave. He told her to hang in there. Once she has it under control, this _is_ something else he intends to fix. He's not confident about straying too far from her yet, though, so it's only reluctantly that he lets himself be roped in to get William a signal.

William reacts to disappointment like a petulant ten year old, and it's by turns pathetic, amusing and terrifying.

There's a pile of useful books that Nathan got - that Mara got for him - that first day back in Haven, with a mind to how his _make_ Trouble works, that explain technical processes, engineering, chemical reactions, and other technologies. He and William are still pouring over them when Mara goes to bed. She spent the afternoon seeming distracted and strange. He once saw her staring into a mirror and stroking her new hair with a strange distance in her eyes.

Sophie nudged a bowl at them hours ago, and Nathan has eaten intermittently and it's probably been stone cold for most of that time. William's is mostly untouched. Nathan hopes Sophie doesn't try anything foolish. He has other things that will keep an eye on her while he can't, but he can't fully control how they'll react. He starts to get conscious that he hasn't seen or heard from her in a while.

It's night by the time William and Nathan hit on the idea of using Nathan's _find_ Trouble for the best place in the castle to put their signal-gathering device. The _make_ Trouble won't co-operate, but William instructs his black spheres to create a dish receiver. Nathan's not real sure _how_ that works, but it evidently does. They end with, for all their pains, a fuzzy picture of satellite sports, with the TV in a spare room at the top of the castle.

Nathan suspects that William is a lot less savvy about the modern world than he tries to project. He did spend the last several hundred years trapped in another dimension.

William has a much shorter attention span than his survival of those hundreds of years with his mind intact would suggest At least, judging by Mara's reactions he started out like this, and his quirks aren't a consequence of his exile. Once they've got the TV up and running, he sits through ten minutes of football before he gets up and says, "Let's go get pizza."

"I don't think Mara was very happy about the pizza," Nathan comments, keeping the remark deliberately low-key. William vs. the modern world is a kind of entertainment, he supposes. He doesn't think Mara was very happy about the TV, either, and even less so about William bouncing off the walls fixating on the TV after they got back, especially once he dragged Nathan into it.

"She's just tired," William says, tapping his forehead, reminding Nathan there's a reason he has greater insight here. "Getting her hair changed took a lot out of her."

Nathan blinks, and he understands that it's more about identity than the women-and-hair jokes William was spouting earlier, but it's still... strange.

They raid the larder and lounge around in the kitchen. Nathan looks for any sign of where Sophie went while trying to look like he isn't worried. William offers the plate of pizza to him, and it's so ludicrous he thinks, _why not?_ and takes a slice. "What the hell possessed you to buy frozen pizza?"

"I liked the flat bread... this is not as nice as the ones from the shops that sell it hot," William critiques, staring at the slice he's just taken a bite out of with severe judgement.

 _God_. "You've been living on take-out pizza? That's what you've been eating ever since you showed up in Haven?" He supposes that makes a kind of sense.

"I liked the crispy chicken and the... what do you call it? Barbecue sauce. Those, too. Kind of missed them when you pushed me down a hole and I thought I was back to spending countless years exiled among alien worlds again." There's laughter in William's face and his voice, but the tiniest edge of accusation along with it.

"Yeah? Well, I'd do it again. Anytime." Nathan responds with layers of false sweetness and a stretched smile, thinking of being twisted like a pretzel in the boat earlier that afternoon by William's goon. At least he's still wearing his own clothes. Mara's either forgotten about the others they brought back or she's been too tired to launch into that argument.

William eats the ex-frozen pizza, wearing an expression that gives a _so-so_ verdict as he gets used to its shortcomings. "You know, when two people have been as close as you and I have been, it's sad that you can still talk like that."

Nathan snarls and turns his back on William, then goes to grab things at random from the larder, shoves the pizza over to get at -what, fishcakes? Something else breaded? He puts them on a plate and takes it across to a chair far away from William, where he sits down to eat.

When William wavers a moment pulling faces, then comes to sit opposite him, it's a real effort not to be so childish as to just get up and move again. This is worse than _Duke_ , who had at least had some concept of _enough_ , even when he was eight. And at least he could hit Duke without - well, with only normal repercussions.

"I wanted to talk to you candidly, actually," William says, "about that."

"About what?" Nathan slaps his palms on the table in irritation and is deliberately obtuse. He knows exactly what William means. "She's not here to make me _bend over for you_."

"Well, about _that_ ," William returns dryly, "yeah. Because, seriously, I am okay with the other way around. It doesn't have to be you, eh, doing the _bending_ , if you really want to put it that way. You're kinda making me uncomfortable with it, to be honest."

"If it makes you that uncomfortable, keep your dick to yourself. I already told you I don't want you."

William makes a noise of frustration. "Oh, come on! You and me and her! We could be so _perfect_! Nathan!"

There's a sappy cast to his face that fills Nathan with a revulsion that takes him off-guard. He already got fucked once when he didn't want it - Mara's manipulation and power combined with the mere fact of William's _touch_. He reaches across the table and bunches his fist in William's collar before thought kicks in.

"- _No fighting!"_ Mara's voice echoes from somewhere. Nathan's fingers jolt loose.

"Ow," William offers. "I was going to warn you against doing that if, you know, you'd given me any chance to speak."

"Right," Nathan bites off sourly. "You're _connected_." He sits down again slowly... even as William sighs and gets up.

William goes to the cupboard they're keeping the alcohol in. He opens a bottle of expensive whiskey that smells just divine. Nathan swallows involuntarily as he watches William pour two glasses. His tongue is already trying to figure out what the taste would be like from the scent. But he says, "I'm not drinking with you."

He's not going to let William get him so drunk that he can warp his decisions with the promise of _feeling_.

"Nate..." William grins as he walks back to the table, one tumbler under his nose and heaven crossing his face as he inhales, the other tumbler held out in invitation. "Come on... I _know_ you want it." He shunts it over the table top toward Nathan's hand and it almost ends up on the floor. Nathan breathes out sharply as he just catches it in time. "The whiskey," William emphasizes lazily and belatedly, with a leer. "I know one thing we have in common is the love of a good malt. Cheers." He raises his glass, then tips it back.

Nathan drinks. The movement is swift and angry, until the taste explodes on his tongue. He slows down despite himself. "Why do you even want this?" he asks, with all the disbelief that's saturated his interactions with William since that night on the monochrome world. "I don't understand why you're willing to share _Mara_ , let alone why you'd want _me_..."

"You're part of us now." William shoves aside the mostly empty plates between them so he can lean closer. Nathan is often too aware of what William is doing since that night, but this is right in his face. When William puts his hand on Nathan's shoulder, where his shirt is a barrier between them, it's less problematic for him to leave it there than push it away and risk touching skin. "Mara won't tell you. It's not what she wants, but I'm... just glad to be back. It doesn't matter to me if you're baggage or bonus." William trails his hand along Nathan's chin and he _feels_ the burn of whiskey in his mouth, then the burn travel down his throat as he swallows reflexively, and he's ashamed to be too astounded and overcome to shove off the touch that's allowing him to experience it. "Was that good for you?"

Nathan lifts his glass around William's hand and gulps the rest of its contents, then pulls away, standing up, putting the glass down. The echo of sensation continues to ripple through him.

He had to examine himself long and hard, before he dared make any move or let slip _anything_ , whether he loved Audrey for reasons other than her ability to make him feel sensation again. He's _not_ going to let William lead him around by the lure of sensation when Mara already has so many hooks of that kind deep into him.

"I'm not your 'bonus'. She doesn't own me, and you _definitely_ don't." He wishes he hadn't put down the glass. He could throw it. He _made_ it, might as well destroy it. "The only thing she can force me to do is fuck her, and by extension you. Whatever else I do is my own choice."

"...Okay, then," William says, with amusement. "I was going to suggest that we could try to take it slower. Come up with our own arrangement. In the meantime, I won't try to 'fuck' you again, but you, _you_ have to promise to try in return. Nate?"

Nathan stares at him. "Try what?" he asks, far too incautiously in the circumstances.

"Try to _try_ ," William groans. "Oh, Nathan, you really _are_. Try to get used to the way things are going to be! Mara wants us all together, and she gets what she wants. We start small. Start with a simple kiss. And then-"

Nathan laughs because it's ludicrous. "I'm not going to kiss you."

"-And _then_ we call that a done deal for the rest of the day. No more advances, no touching, no nothing. Unless, of course, you ask for more. What do you say to that?"

"You're lying," is what Nathan says, uncertain, pretty sure his face must be twisted as all hell.

If he had the choice, he'd never touch William at all. But the fact is, the next time Mara feels like pushing it all the way, he _won't_ have the choice... Unless he can make an ally of William, all Mara has to do is change her fickle mind and they play his body like a fiddle, _again_. With his body a blank most of the time, the things that do touch him leave stronger echoes: meaning he can think back and still almost feel the strange absoluteness of being penetrated, having William inside him. He would prefer to have more leverage against it happening again.

William is a liar and a manipulator. Nathan _knows that_. He even knows what this is. But yet...

If he plays along, _if_... William has to give him something, a sweetener, a show of good faith. It could buy him time. It just depends what Nathan is prepared to... willingly... offer. If he's willing to put up his pride, such as that is now, to buy the reprieve.

It isn't like he's going to fall for William if he lets him _take it softly_. It will at least be a less direct humiliation than the next time they just decide to take him and won't stop.

William chooses to interpret his uncertainty as assent, stepping into Nathan's space and sliding fingers along his wrist where it hangs by his side. The emptiness of his skin lights up with the spots of William's fingerprints. Nathan thinks, sickly, that it should be _different_ from when he's touched by Audrey, but it doesn't feel any different. This is also sensation, while the rest is nothing. It's still overwhelming - perhaps all the more so, in the moment, in the small touches than the big ones. Harder, more intimate, and things get lost in pain or arousal, which are also overwhelming but, well, different.

"How about it?" William asks, closer to Nathan's jaw than he should be. Nathan realises, jarringly, that he did kind of melt into the touch. "One little kiss? It's not _so_ bad a thought..."

"You don't want me," Nathan grunts, voice hoarse and heavy. He can't feel an erection, and he's not going to look down, but he thinks it's entirely possible his touch-deprived body is responding depressingly vigorously. "This is just a power game."

His revulsion isn't - probably it isn't - just because William's a man. Nathan is actually fairly sure that factor wouldn't be enough to keep him from an honest offer and the promise of sensation, after all these years without. But William's a manipulator and an ass, and a murderer besides, so he is _not_ going to fall for this.

"Okay..." Much of the levity has gone from William's voice and body language. He pokes a finger into Nathan's chest, unfelt through the fabric of his shirt. "Here we are. One kiss, now, willing, and I swear that buys you until the morning. I won't touch you again at all until then. Test my good faith, Nathan."

Nathan doesn't believe him, but he'll challenge William to leave him the hell alone. "Go on, then. Prove it."

It's a moment before he remembers that challenge included a kiss. " _Finally_ ," William breathes, then lets out a soft _whuff_ , and he's leaned in so close that even that touches Nathan's face. The brush of warm air - the _feeling_ of air and warmth - makes him shiver as it caresses the edge of his jaw. "It doesn't have to be terrible. We're stuck together. We might as well make it... worthwhile."

His lips close in on Nathan's.

The intimacy of it almost sends him staggering back even though he tries to steel himself against it. William has fucked him, with Mara's help, but never kissed him. He feels the softness of other lips against his, not particularly less soft for the fact they belong to a man, another's breath breathing into his parted mouth, then the damp roughness of a tongue, teasing just inside his lip. He shudders as William's arms slide under his shirt. That was not in the deal.

"No," he says, against the lips, hands clawing and catching at the interlopers. " _No_ , damn it." His words sound squashed. William's hands move away and he has no doubt they're elsewhere on his person, but he can't feel them for the intervening clothing. He lets William back into the kiss, reluctantly, as the other man makes disappointed and then encouraging noises, though it's beginning to feel like this exercise has been extended for a length of time that is very much pushing it.

" _Oh my God_ ," says the usually-welcome voice behind Nathan that has to be about the last in the world he'd want to hear right now. He jolts and stumbles back. He can still taste William on his lips - William and illicit whiskey - can still _feel_ William on his lips. He opens his mouth to defend himself and realises he can't. He can't risk betraying Audrey's presence to William.

His heart is pounding. He can hear it, even if he can't feel anything real anymore, now that he isn't touching William. Panic is close. What he just did - what was he _thinking_? Is he that driven and desperate already? He forces words from his lips. "Are you going to keep your promise? You don't touch me until morning."

"Oh, _Nathan_ ," Audrey says, a pang in her voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't really think..."

But William's talking, and he can't focus on them both at once. "Yeah. I guess so, although that ending was kind of abrupt. I mean, goddamn, you are _skittish_." He sounds like he finds it more amusing than anything else. "Guess we really did jump straight in at the deep end the first time."

Nathan wants to punch the smug smile off his face, but just tightens his fists and pushes them down to his sides, because the repercussions of that time still fill his nightmares. "Fine, then," he snaps. " _Leave me alone_." He half runs out of the room. Audrey gains the lead on him by pushing right through him, which startles him, but he gestures her onwards. They're out of sight of William, but probably not beyond hearing. He stumbles out of the front door into the underdeveloped gardens. It's not just seclusion he's seeking. He definitely feels like he needs the air.

It's dark but the moon is bright. A shadowy figure with a police cap turns their way, then passes onward. They're _his_ , so Nathan isn't going to worry about them.

He turns to Audrey. There's a fresh tree stump between them. Nathan's _make_ Trouble can't create or effect living things, like trees or plants. Mara told him after the fact that while he'd been passed out, William had gone out and cut down the most inconvenient of the trees close to the castle.

"I didn't want to-" Nathan begins.

"No. I know," she accepts again, quickly, her hand on his arm - ghosting the gesture of touching his arm. Through his clothes he couldn't tell anyway, but he knows she can't touch him. She stops her fingers just shy, so they don't pass straight through. "You shouldn't have to do it." Her eyes blaze with frustrated anger.

"It seemed- I suppose it doesn't matter. It's done. Maybe he'll keep his word. It seemed worth a try." It always feels like he's waited an eternity to see Audrey again, and he doesn't want to waste the time talking about _William_. He does remember, though, that Mara was tired. "Mara went to bed. Was that your doing?" He mimes taking her hands in his, and she lets him, playing into the illusion. He sighs and closes his eyes even though he can't feel her.

He hears her doubt. "No... Yes. I don't know. I don't know what influence I have over her when I'm not... _here_. I don't really remember what she does while I'm sleeping. I don't have her memories."

"Maybe carrying you around is wearing on her in some way." It's Nathan's best hope. He doesn't know if Audrey can change Mara, if she's screened off and separated like this. "She changed her hair. Blonde. It's so close to how yours used to be." He reaches a hand as if to touch it, though they can't connect. She tips her head into the gesture, letting him palm her cheek. Sort of.

A moment later, she catches his hand again in her intangible ones. "Let me see your hands properly." She guides him how to turn his wrist with her own movements, until he lays his palms out for her. She sighs with some relief when she sees them. "This is so much better than it was."

She knows Mara made Dwight fix him, at least to the extent he could fix the injuries that were old before Nathan ever reached him. "She went there all ready to force him to do it, but I think he'd have done it anyway." He grimaces. "Dwight's going to come after her, sooner or later. I don't know what I'll do. I'm the one meant to defend this place, but against _Dwight_? I don't want to hurt him. Worse, Duke was here this morning. Mara doesn't know."

"Is he all right?" Audrey asks.

"Fine. Mara fixed him, too... you remember that, right?" It's worth mentioning, as he pauses and meets her eye to check, because sometimes she _doesn't_ remember things, but she nods. "It seems to be holding. I don't know if he's still Troubled or not. Jennifer was with him."

Audrey smiles. "Then they're both fine."

Nathan thinks his expression turns hard. "They _won't_ be if they do stupid things like coming _here_ , straight to where Mara is! She's kidnapped a girl... or William did. Troubled her with some awful thing. Troubled another one in town today. For all I know she could decide to kill someone next. She killed people... beings... when we were in the void. She didn't care about their lives."

"Yet you're here with her," Audrey tells him, flatly, and her tone and expression tell him not to be a hypocrite.

"Mara's my fault. That the Troubles are still here is my fault. The least I can do is keep trying to find some way... Besides, _you're_ here, so there's nowhere else I'd be."

"Even with William?" she prods, seriously, scanning his face, moving ephemeral fingers over his cheek. "I'd kiss you, but..." She sighs. He doesn't know which 'but' she's thinking of.

"I'm not too traumatised by William," Nathan grunts. "Especially when I can't feel you at the moment anyway."

Her eyes are hurt, though he didn't mean that. "I hate to think of you having to lie next to him - either of them, after what they did. You shouldn't be here, Nathan, any more than Duke or Jennifer should be here. You should be far away. Go back to Haven. Help Dwight."

"I won't abandon you." Nathan pulls his wrist from her and bunches his hands into helpless fists again.

She turns on the spot, spreading her arms. "For all we know, I could still find you even if you _were_ back on the mainland, Nathan!"

"Leaving Mara and William unchecked? I'm on the inside. I can _help_."

"Unless she's ordering you to be the one to do the damage, and making sure you _do_!" Audrey exclaims.

"It doesn't work like that." He tries to lower his voice a little. He doesn't want to shout at her, nor draw William's attention. "There's a limit what she can make me do, when she has to be touching me to really use that influence."

"Sooner or later she'll think of something better than that Trouble to keep you controlled. Something _worse_. You have to get out of here before she does."

They glare at each other. In some ways it's like old times when their anger collapses in unison.

"All right," Audrey says. "All right. So you're not going to go." She breaks off and jerks her head around. "I thought I saw-" She blinks rapidly. "Oh. Are they your creatures, or more of William's?"

"Mine. Don't worry." Nathan jerks a silent parting hand at the guard, sending it off.

Audrey pulls a face. "Creepy."

"Seem to be a lot of things that are, that Mara can bring out in me."

She huffs softly. "Everyone has some dark in their personality, or I guess we wouldn't have the Troubles at all." Despite his reassurances, she stares beyond him at the shadow policeman until it goes away, rounding the corner. "Why are they... like that? I mean, why like police officers?"

"Mara says it's a play on my pride. Because I lost the role of Chief of Police." Nathan ducks his head.

"These Troubles strip you pretty bare," she observes. "Nathan, it's okay. I already _know_ you. That's precisely how _she_ knows to do these things. Knows what will work." She shakes her head. "I'm not going to judge you."

"Al right." Nathan drags a deep breath. Duke and Dwight he's less sure about, and the way Duke spoke to him this morning he's not overly confident of their faith in him, but his re-emergence from the void was not exactly a triumph. He isn't beaten yet, though, and Audrey is _still here_ , her faith in him solid. "God. It seems like it's forever since I saw you."

Her eyes widen. "How long?"

"Just a day. This morning," he answers quickly, remembering how she had disappeared, right before his shadow guards stirred at the presence of Duke and Jennifer. She has no way to monitor the passage of time. He missed her for several days, one time right after coming back from the void. He was so exhausted from the return to Haven and subsequently from creating the castle that he'd slept through the occasions that Mara slept, leaving her no opportunity to emerge. He comforts himself with the thought that if she _remembers_ that, she's growing stronger. "Just a _long_ day."

"Find somewhere more sheltered than this to sit down, and you can tell me about it," Audrey says, always thinking about the elements and the discomforts his body is being subjected to, even though he doesn't really experience them at all.

They move further onward, where Nathan sits on the trunk of one of William's felled pines, shaded by the foliage. They talk and plot their resistance from within the heart of Mara's stronghold, long into the night.


	4. Chapter 3

**NOTE:** Sorry for the delay in posting - I had to abridge this chapter for fanfictiondotnet. The uncut version is available at AO3, Dreamwidth and Livejournal. Even with the cuts, be warned that this chapter contains a lengthy **non consensual** sex scene, integral to the plot and character development, albeit one which is now somewhat less explicit.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

Mara wakes with conversations reverberating in her head which she has not had, words she never spoke but which feel so much _hers_ that she can't deny them. She can't quite ever remember the words. They dissipate with the threads of her dreams, leaving ephemeral trails through her mind.

In the three days since their last visit to the mainland, an intense feeling of unrest has been pressing down upon her more and more, bringing shortness of breath, the edge of panic, a sense of urgency as though she might run out of time. She can't fathom the source of it. Is it an echo of something Dwight is planning? Whatever it _is_ , she feels fiercely and unpleasantly that she is poised on the edge of disaster.

She hopes the voices in her head are merely an effect of the connection she shares with William, now that they're together again after so very long. She has no recollection of experiencing this before, but given the centuries that have passed, and that her memory is not what it once was... Certainly it's more comforting to tell herself that she and William have been talking to each other in their sleep than to entertain other possibilities.

Mara shakes her head and brings her attention back to the actual world, where a gentle hand curls over her belly while William breathes against her back. Nathan is a rigid line at the very edge of their large bed, placing a full foot of space between himself and the two of them, a sight which is saddening and unwelcome.

She had agreed to give William the opportunity to win Nathan around. He is subtler than she is. But three days have tested her patience with little indication of progress. She shared William's thoughts while he enticed Nathan to a kiss, amused by the result. But she grows weary of futilities such as watching William slide a knee between the legs of a man who cannot feel it, whose gaze is locked off into the distance, who endures the touch only because it allows him to place a limitation upon how much of _them_ he has to endure.

Oh, she is sure William could do it, for he has great powers of persuasion, but she can see that it would take weeks, _months_ , time that she does not have to waste. She should be in Haven sowing Troubles in preparation for her future reign. She will need more than Nathan and William and a cursed cook to make her position secure. She doesn't trust Dwight not to raise problems against her while they are preoccupied upon this island.

She has been intensely frustrated by the pattern set by Nathan. As soon as they give him any space, he seizes more. He has not slept in their bed, sometimes never lying down with them at all, she suspects, but sneaking back at dawn for an hour or two, then dragging himself up again on the pretext of a morning run. He pretends much of his early morning routine is not dedicated to talking down the cook from whatever new escape scenario she concocted during the night.

The cook may have been a mistake, because her presence is disruptive and it is Nathan who takes up the chore of controlling her. He could let the threat of reprisal do it for him - he has power enough - but he _does not_ , so the discipline problem is perpetuated. Mara has grit her teeth and endured, trying not to tip the equilibrium sought by William for his program of sweeter enticements.

Sensing her dissatisfaction, William sleepily reaches out and trails his fingers very lightly over the back of Nathan's hair, the side where it's still fluffy. Even in his sleep, Nathan manages to shuffle closer to the edge of the bed. Any further and he'll be on the floor.

Annoyance rolls through Mara like a bout of sickness, heavy and unwanted. She _does not_ want to be at this juncture, but she cannot wait forever for Nathan to get there on his own.

" _How is the seduction going_?" she asks William's sleepy mind.

" _How do you think_?" Even his inner voice is droll. " _Yesterday I spent half an hour kneeling with my hands on his crotch while he stared down like a stone and held his jeans in a death-grip. Actually_ feeling _it would have been a step too far_." He hesitates. " _Today I think I might actually return to the whiskey and kisses. It's the only time I've made him_ want _something_."

" _No_ ," Mara tells him, the heaviness only intensifying further. " _I will deal with this today, once and for all_."

There is resistance to the idea within her. Those parts which align themselves most closely to Audrey in the particular, but also pieces of her unmistakably Mara that do not want to risk blemishing Nathan's stubbornness and will, which she appreciates greatly when it isn't confounding her... and sometimes, despite herself, when it is.

Mara reaches out and prods her splayed fingertips into the bare planes of his back. " _Nathan_."

Whether he was asleep or not, he's aware enough to jolt at her touch. "Mara," he grunts from his huddle. "Let me sleep."

"How long have you been in bed?" she asks him sharply. His skin feels cold, slightly tacky, but he doesn't smell of sweat, he smells of soil and trees and rain. She was aware that he was not in bed when she went to sleep. Did he spend all night outside? To _avoid_ them?

Anger boils up in her. She wants them to be united. She acknowledges that she cannot dispense with Nathan, but she _will not_ tolerate him being the note of discordance pulling them apart. "Nathan, look at me. We are a family. You are _mine_. I will not have you sleep outside, do you hear me? Your place is here."

He turns to her willingly, then, with his eyes smouldering. "When you're not even awake to care, you still want to control what I do?"

When she's not awake to make him, he means he'll continue to do what he likes.

She senses something important is in danger of slipping away from her, though the phantoms of her dreams won't tell her more. She is not sure how to mend the situation with Nathan without breaking what she treasures... but if she acts upon this, she has to do it firmly and sure-handedly, and cannot let doubt intrude.

Mara can feel the pressure and heat of William's morning hardness against her thigh. She crawls closer to Nathan and flattens her palm against his cheek, focusing on the Trouble that binds him to her, calling it out, drawing his lust and need to the fore. He surges from the very edge of the bed, his absolute avoidance disintegrating, body worming close to her in a few swift kicks of movement. His hand goes to her hip, then he's trying to curl every part of himself around her, unheeding of William so close.

"Patience," Mara purrs, sensing William's arousal spike, and to Nathan, "You, too." She peels him from her, pinning him on his back on the bed. Sense returns in stutters and fits to his hazy eyes, but she keeps enough of a hold over him that each time it quickly drifts away again. She reaches down to touch him, finding little is needed to complete his journey to physical arousal, then she moves so that his squirming hips find little satisfaction.

William is touching himself despite her orders and blinks at her guiltily as she turns.

"Soon," Mara promises him, peeling his hand away. Being in this position between the two of them, the sense of control she has bolsters her confidence and will, dispelling some of the shadows that greeted her awakening.

"Get the lubricant," she orders William, and smiles as she watches his ass while he crawls across the bed to retrieve it from the nightstand.

"Mara, I-" Sharpness in Nathan's voice as he fights to come back, but he's still gasping and half undone.

"You are trying my patience." She touches him lightly and watches him lose himself again. On one level it's satisfying. On another, it's a further frustration to witness him become not-himself as he goes under, because that isn't what she wants of him. She wants Nathan whole and full-hearted, not by this means.

Well, she will have him all by the end of this day, whether he wishes it or not.

It was always ambitious to hope her patience could last until he stopped resisting them naturally.

Mara tells him, "You shall be one with us. You ours and we... yours." Her lingering distaste for that part can still be heard in her voice, despite her efforts. " _Nathan_ , you must let us love you. It is the only solution, and it hurts us so deeply, Nathan, when you don't."

" _Fuck_ -" A return of her hand drives the incipient insult or profanity from his lips, leaving its opener an appropriate interjection. Mara smiles and moves him until he is splayed out below her, legs wide, arms sprawled, head rolled on the mattress, missing the pillows. She leaves him groaning and trying not to writhe in place. A pink flush tinges his body, fiercest at his cheeks. His forcefield Trouble tries to kick in, but fizzles and dies at her nearness. It was never protection from _her_.

"What - what are you going to do?" His chest heaves as he speaks.

"Only to affirm that you are ours," she tells him, "wholly and completely, in every possible way." She should have done this immediately; should have done it after they submitted to _keeping him_ , to loving him, or at least after they got back to Haven and a place of relative safety. "You will have no doubts left, no room for apprehension, once we prove to you everything you are missing through this pointless _fear_."

William offers the lube, his eyes flicking from Nathan's face to Mara's. He perches on his knees and looks... awkward, almost hesitating, but also fervently excited. Mara can feel his excitement thrumming through her, and thinks, feeling her lover's desire to possess Nathan again, that it is certainly past time to wring out that cooperation.

Nathan doesn't object as Mara's fingers slide inside him - touch, after all, of the most intimate kind. He moans and melts and relaxes around it like that penetration is a thread of control, a puppet-string to his core.

William says, with a trace of anxiety. "I guess this blows _my_ whole play out of the water."

Nathan is limp rags underneath her. "I will have him deny you no longer. Do not worry, my love," she reassures him. A black sphere leaves the pouch on the night stand and hovers, ready, though it is not time yet, not by a long way. She needs to work up the closeness and the combined energy of the three of them, first.

She shifts her position to lie half on top of Nathan, hip rested on his sprawled-wide thigh, and tucks her newly shorn and straightened blonde hair against his chest. His warmth shivers beneath her. His arms curl unbidden around her. A breast succumbs to his grasping hand. "Good," Mara purrs, as she continues the work of her fingers, pausing to withdraw and add further lubricant.

This would probably take a lot longer if she hadn't conditioned his body to have no resistance against her. As a consequence he is wide open very quickly.

William watches, his energy barely contained, twitchy and aroused. "Take him now," Mara says, pulling her fingers clear and dragging them across Nathan's thigh.

"Nathan... buddy..." William croons, leaning over on hands and knees. "Sorry, buddy, looks like the plan got escalated." He draws a shivering breath. "Man, you look so good there. You know I can't hold back, not when I see you like this? Can't stop now."

Mara narrows her eyes at him as he casts her as the villain. They are joined in spirit and he can't hide his thoughts from her, but he isn't even self-conscious about it. It isn't as if the _pretence_ of being good for his word is not exactly that.

He gives her a shrug and the overriding thought comes back through the link: _I love him. He already hates me enough_.

" _You appalling schemer_ ," Mara calls him, fondly. Aloud, she says, "I love you both far too much to let this parody of intimacy continue unaddressed. We must not be so _divided_. We will show him how much better things will be when we are truly together."

Mara moves to allow William's access, curling by Nathan's side and stroking his face instead.

Nathan, touch deprived, sobs and shakes as William's head bows between his thighs. It was not in Mara's plan to start this way, but she allows it, enjoying the sight of William's hands curled over Nathan's hips and the bob of his head. Nathan's body trembles. He makes noises that are pathetic, despite her soothing touch on his face.

Last time, they did this very quickly, and Mara was sure to distract Nathan thoroughly before they'd begun and continue to do so throughout. Now, she lets him rise to the surface of her control, to experience William's ministrations with almost full awareness of himself.

William finally moves over him, lifts and manipulates his legs gently to ease himself down to target, and slides slowly in. Nathan's body gives great jolts as if he's trying to escape, even though they're not voluntary movements, even though Mara takes hold of his shoulders, pinning him down briefly with a stronger reassertion of her influence.

Once his initial possession of Nathan's body is firmly established, William starts to move, so slowly and gently it only inflames a desperate need. Mara is pleased to witness that need arise, with the increasing flush and sweat-sheen over Nathan's body. He is curled up between them, head back, mouth open, gasping and groaning, reduced to a state of feeling and nothing else, backed into a place that allows no trace of resistance from his starved nerves.

Mara is delighted. Mara's compulsion is not doing this. She released him fully several minutes since. It's already hard to reconcile this with his usual self, so contrary and stubborn.

But she needs to reduce him more. She gestures William to withdraw and gently pulls Nathan back from the edge. Then she climbs onto him, careful not to reach for the control that has become a habit, and for satisfying long minutes rides him herself, before withholding her body, too, and they cool Nathan back from the brink again, laughing as he pants curses at them. This time, William takes Nathan casually from a sprawled position, both of them a mess of long limbs spilled over the top of the wrinkled bedclothes.

When Nathan is begging, "Please... Please..." with William moving very slow and sure inside him and refusing to allow him over the brink; when he is begging as _himself_ , face pressed into the blankets in shame, but still begging, Mara judges the moment right.

She calls to her hand the waiting black sphere, and crushes her palm against the spot on Nathan's chest where she applied the prior Trouble, that first night in the void, engineering and amending even as she lowers her lips to Nathan's and kisses him so he cannot doubt she does this with love. With her palms still in place she rises and twists to kiss William, and with them all so closely wrought together, the threefold bond is begun. She feels the Trouble twist and adjust under her palm, until it binds not two, but three.

Nathan comes finally under William, shouting something incoherent that could be last minute anger or resistance, but the deed is done. One of Nathan's arms flails out - the other trapped between his body and William - and he jerks, but can't escape the pinning weight.

William falls into a limp sprawl atop Nathan, and makes soothing sounds, his hands petting gently, lovingly, conscious of the inexperience of his partner.

The flatness in Nathan's turned away face dissolves as his gaze is pulled back to William, and Mara is pleased to see it become adoring. Nathan accepts William's embrace and presses in against him, arms circling William's ribs, accepting the kisses William trails around his jaw with a kind of sated wonder.

"Hah," says Mara, half-laugh, half... almost a sob. She is so relieved that it _worked_.

She lies down with them again, firmly disentangling one of each of their hands from the pile to drag between her legs to attend to her own neglected needs. Their fingers explore her together, and she knows that the foundation has been well established.

She does not acknowledge the thread of doubt that what she has done to Nathan here, as last time, overstepped some invisible line, a transgression she will pay for, but a payload that hasn't landed yet.

* * *

Nathan's brain stutters back to life, though it takes countless minutes to regain any sort of true functionality, processing what just happened. What's been done to him _now_. That he is in the circle of William's arms and feels no revulsion, no urge to pull away, and Mara, while she is there too, is not doing anything to directly cause it.

He makes a noise that doesn't involve his lips or his brain. He might no longer feel revulsion for William, but when he adds up what happened, he still _knows_ what they did. He can, he discovers, still recoil from that.

" _Off_ ," he chokes. "Get off me."

"Shh." William's voice is soft and... there's a trace there of _amusement_ and... soft hands envelop Nathan's face, stroking back through his choppy hair, enticing him to sink back into William's shoulder and breathe in and _feel_.

"Good. _Good_..." A hand rubs circles over his back. He feels Mara's hand drift between his legs again, and it seems he's spent long enough in limbo that his body starts to respond anew.

" _Come on_." It's all processing like dim snap-shots. Their voices seem distant, and he can't react to them in the moment. William sounds excited, eager. William is turning around, showing Nathan the long planes of his back.

Mara's hand, slick and gooey, rubs the slickness onto Nathan's hand, and guides his hand over William's ass, pushes his fingers lower. "Almost ready," she says, a soft whisper. "There... that's it, make him ready for you."

William gasps underneath him. The world flickers in and out, lacking choices or logic, and Nathan is aware of riding William, face pressed into the back of the other man's neck while his hips move in a new compulsion to lay claim. Mara's words and hands urge him on. Everything else disappears under William's tightness and heat and Mara's hands. He doesn't think he lasts long - overloaded, overridden, all too _new_ \- and after it's done William and Mara are all over him; kissing, whispering against his skin, licking, biting. They claim his lips, one of them after the other, and his nipples, one of them on either side, and they _touch_ him all over, hands smoothing across his skin, mimicking love. The reality is only taunts and betrayal, Nathan thinks. Then the contact drugs him, shreds him, and scatters his pieces all over the bedchamber.

There's everything wrong with this. Unease inserts itself into his flickering consciousness and drives him to reconstruct thought with a sense of urgency. He can't afford this, the subconscious voice tells him, some distant part of him removed from the physical act of succumbing to William and Mara.

He's aware of the passage of time - a lot of it; even to the point where either William or Mara have been absent for periods since this began, taking care of needs that they deny him while they complete this... this _overpowering_ of him. He thinks it must be hours, the whole morning perhaps. The light levels have shifted.

In a clear space, with voices in the background announcing further plans for his body that indicate the respite won't last, he turns his face into the pillows and tries to muster physical power and mental self-determination enough to push himself up and stagger from the room. Maybe if he's away from this place, from this bed that seems to have blended outwards across space and time to become his whole existence, then he could remember fully the situation that's nagging on his mind, telling him there is something that needs to be addressed. He knows the castle far better than William and Mara. If he can hide from them long enough to just _think_...

He makes it so far as one foot on the floor, his ass perched on the edge of the bed, striving for the power to rise while his limbs shake. Then William's hands catch the back of his neck and shoulders. Not roughly, but in soft, massaging trails. And William says, "Don't go."

Nathan sags back unresisting, just like with Mara.

 _Like with Mara_. His reasoning mind puts together what they've done to him.

"No," he says, with numb lips.

Looking up from lying on his back, William seems to tower a mile above him. William is on his knees between Nathan's sprawled legs. There was a transition there, but Nathan can't put together how much time passed in the moments he lost. William's hands slide up his thighs, then down again, just teasing, holding off straying to more intimate territory.

Mara's head appears over William's shoulder. Her face is pale and critical and she says, "He's not ready yet."

William turns his head and says something, and places his hand on Nathan, causing his hips to jerk into William's palm.

"Oh, that's ready, true enough," Mara says, with a dismissive laugh.

It seems peculiar to Nathan - an observation that will be mostly made piecing this together later, retracing the steps - that Mara seems tight and strained and unhappy, even while she stretches and skews him to remake him as something more in keeping with what she wants.

Mara inserts herself between William and Nathan, climbing across Nathan's chest.

"I don't want to." Incoherent with sensation, Nathan whispers into Audrey's face where it hangs above him. "Please." There won't be anything left of him by the time they're satisfied. Maybe Audrey can revive him, he thinks, but Audrey's face blurs into Mara's and he remembers.

He should have gone with Duke. If they use sex here and now to make a mindless slave of him, what purpose did staying serve?

"... _Stop._ I want to stop." Vocalising his desires doesn't gain him any traction. William's fingers slip inside him, and with Mara's weight atop him, he can't even move. Mara kisses him and slides her body lower. He feels her fingers working between her legs, guiding herself down where too many body parts press too tightly together for her to see what she's doing.

"Soon," she promises between kisses, as he's engulfed and lost. "You're doing well, Nathan. Just try a little more. Don't be so uptight. All it takes to free yourself forever is love us back."

Mara pulls him on top of her, rolling their bodies, and the world almost reels away from him again. The pressure of the fingers inside him withdraws. "William," Mara begins, but even before she's finished speaking, Nathan feels the weight on his back. He dimly realises that they're positioned the same as they were that first time in the worlds of the void before William completes the scene of his recollection.

Nathan's mouth stretches open, soundless, gulping for breath. With Mara encompassing him from the front, and his body might by now be so used to being penetrated that it puts up no resistance to William's smooth entry, but his _nerves_ aren't... He feels like he's going to combust from the heat that rages through him with the press of all this _contact_. He feels like he'll die.

William rolls his hips, hand curled around Nathan's hip to carry him with the movement into Mara. Nathan tries to brace on the shifting bedclothes, struggling to roll free of them, but he's too thoroughly pinned on either side to move. Mara wraps her legs around both of them, ankles tangling behind William's hips, trapping him further. Her arms curl past Nathan's ears to wrap around William's neck.

"You _will be_ ours," she says. "You already are. Say it for me, Nathan. I want to hear you say it. Tell me you're ours. Tell William how much you want him." Her pupils seem to have swelled to make her eyes bright black beads staring too eagerly into his.

"Fuck-" That's far too raw a choice of wording. Nathan seals his lips, but after that he blanks for a long time and has no idea what she might have gotten out of him.

When he returns to himself, Mara is lying a few feet away, watching as William finishes. William lowers himself so they lie together in an ungainly sprawl. He holds tightly to Nathan, cuddling him with an arm squeezing like a bar under his still raised knee, and breathes an impossible, " _I love you_ ," into his neck.

Nathan chokes on his bitter laughter as warm fluff engulfs his head and he can't... can't _deny_ William. Mara's hand snakes out from between their bodies. He wasn't aware of her approach, or her hand delving in, palm searching out his chest again, but the result slams over him as he lifts his head. He gets overcome by the closeness of William, by a new sense of intimacy with the body next to him, inside him.

Next thing he knows, he's moving over and placing his mouth on William, kissing William of his own accord.

"Oh, well done," William croons, between the kisses he returns like he's been starving for them forever.

He's talking to Mara.

He shifts and curls to wrap his arms and legs around Nathan, who finds he has no impulse to shy from the touch. Mara and William are the only ones who can give him sensation, give him life.

He is also fully aware now of what they have done, and as his brain starts to process it, he becomes increasingly angry, dissatisfaction tearing away at the enforced impulse to let himself love and be loved.

William must feel him tense up. He clutches tighter. "Shh," he croons. "I know what you want. It was too cruel of us to afflict you with such a Trouble, denying you all of this for so long. I'll fuck you again soon. Let's just lie here like this until things perk up, eh?"

Nathan wants to. He wants to stay with both of them in this bed forever. He has no desire to move at all, no desires left that don't include them. His anger struggles to stay alive.

There's still something _else_...

A chink inserts itself into the edge of his consciousness. It's more than a niggle, a doubt from within, this is something _exterior_. His awareness is always at least a little fragmented on some level, these days. He guards the castle - or his creations do, and they have a permanent line directly through to _him_.

That's a line that's been blocked, sidelined and sealed from him by the antics of William and Mara for _hours_ now, inasmuch as he can judge of the passage of time.

"Oh, you _assholes_ ," he grunts, rolling over, scrambling out of William's grip, evading Mara at the edge of the bed, who stares at him while he hits the floor and trips over his own feet. She's wondering why it didn't work, and her thoughts on that are, from what he can tell, a very mixed bag.

But it _didn't_ not-work, did it? What drives him even now is the urge to _protect_ them. They're his, and the island has been wide open _all morning_. Duke, Dwight, the whole damned Guard could be lined up outside...

Nathan staggers to the nearest wall and leans against it, buries his face against his arm as he tries to reach the web of his shadow officers, with their flat, pitiless awarenesses that scan the landscape. No activity... He breathes easier with each flood of images, each report back. No activity... no-one... nothing...

William gets it, and shifts off the bed to pad a few steps closer, tentative but amused. "I sent up my people to the watch tower," he says mollifyingly. "The island's as safe as it can be without you watching over us. You don't need to worry about our safety. You can have a break."

Except one of the last reports is filtering in from inside the castle itself, and Nathan swears violently and almost falls again in his haste to make for the door, pushing off from the wall and lunging. Mara indignantly yells his name, filling the cry with compulsion, but either this is one of those times it just can't find any traction in him or she's acting on habit and it doesn't work anymore after the changes she made to that Trouble to make him _love William_.

"You're about to lose your cook!" he growls back at them. As he did before, with Duke and Jennifer's visit, he sends _stand down_ vibes like crazy through the link, but his control is limited, beyond giving them orders face to face. He isn't telepathic. The reports he receives from them are predominantly visual flashes.

His feet pound the stone floors, probably taking damage as he runs headlong down the stone staircases without watching out for his path. The endless, intensive _sensations_ he's been washed in all morning are gone now, leaving his old familiar numbness.

He can hear them following, but he's faster. All they ever do is sleep and fuck. Since they came here, after he was burned so badly, after exhausting himself creating the castle, he's been doing morning runs around the island headland to try and regain his fitness levels.

He might _just_ be fast enough to save Sophie.

She's cowering before the poised death blow of a shadow officer whose actions have turned sluggish in a partial response to Nathan's screaming at it inside his head. Once again, he puts himself between the shadow and its intended victim, adjusting its prior programming in desperate shouts.

He manages to make it dissipate, then he half-collapses, hands rested to knees, bended over on trembling legs. It's maybe ten seconds before he's paying any attention to the whimpering behind him.

"Sophie-" He starts to turn, to ask if she's all right.

She squeaks and huddles back into the corner between wall and door. There's a broken wire, which Nathan guesses came off some implement from the kitchen, embedded in the lock of the door. Nathan registers that both her squeak and the look on her face now aren't entirely products of fear.

Some of the sentiment in there is more like scandal.

Nathan realises not only is he naked, but the sweat and other expressions of their activities are still on his skin. He can _smell_ them, so surely she must. She stares up at him wide-eyed as Mara and William arrive. "What - what - what do you d-d-do here?" Sophie babbles, eyes fixed on Nathan's body and clutching her arms tighter around her own.

Mara managed to grab a sheet to weave around herself as they left the bedroom to give chase. William did not. _William_ is half erect again, and honestly Nathan wants to know if there's some trick he can pull with those black spheres to make them send his dick into hyperdrive, after the rest of the morning already.

"They're not going to touch you," Nathan stutters, backing off in an uneven lurch, as he realises how close he's standing to the captive woman and the level her head is at. "You're not here for that."

William grabs for him as he almost trips. It's _not_ what Nathan needs or wants, knowing that the next time William touches him, he'll be ready to leap into coitus with him again. It's not abhorrent to him, and it doesn't worry him, but the intellectual awareness of where the lack of abhorrence has come from does.

Mara is rolling her eyes. " _Get up_ ," she says to Sophie with disgust. She takes off her sheet and pushes it into Nathan's arms. "Go get dressed, both of you. _I_ will deal with this."

"No," Nathan grits. Being naked shouldn't be a barrier to protecting the girl, he tells himself, he _reasons,_ however much he wants to crawl away and never come out at the thought of someone else witnessing this. He knows he should drop the sheet so better to oppose Mara and whatever she plans to do, but can't make his hand release its clutching grip, holding one edge of it at chest height to at least curtain his genitals from Sophie's view, along with the worst of the fluids drying on his body. "You don't hurt her."

"Sometimes," Mara says fake-sweetly, "Pets need to be _trained_. You know that, don't you, Nathan? Go with William. Can't you see he's almost ready for you again?"

Nathan can feel it against his hip. He feels _hollow_. Is that all they want him to be? He had thought Mara had other uses for him. Build a castle. Guard her against the world.

 _Hollow_... He takes inspiration from that, clutching at straws. He has to keep something of himself, and if he's going to do that, he needs a break to gather his thoughts and think of something, _anything_ , that can offer a true defence. A last bastion before they drown him between them. "I need to eat," he says desperately. It's afternoon by now. He's had nothing since last night. And he has expended a _lot_ of energy. Not the least in that mad run... which could explain why he's wavering and clumsy on his feet now, even if he can't feel the hunger itself. He asserts, "I think I'm dizzy."

The truth of it rolls over him as soon as he voices it. He was going to stand up to Mara for Sophie's sake. Suddenly he can barely keep his legs under him.

Mara curses.

"I'd better take him to the kitchen," William says. "We _have_ worked him pretty hard. There's still pizza," he adds, with a trace of ridiculous enthusiasm. His hand slides across Nathan's hip and stays there.

"I've not _finished-"_ Mara looks between Nathan and Sophie. "All _right_. But we all need to resume as soon as possible, else risk what we've achieved being undone. Either way, it will require more effort to finish this the longer we wait."

"No hardship for me," William cracks with a crooked smile and a mischievous tip of his eyes to his groin.

Nathan only half absorbs the joke from William and the rest of Mara's report on the status of his sanity in their grasp. His mind is on the woman his Trouble almost killed. "Don't give Sophie any more Troubles. She's been scared out of her mind already, you don't _need_ to do more."

"What kind of lesson is escaping punishment?" Mara reasons. "She was told clearly enough."

Nathan's vision is greying. Despite himself, he lets William drag him away.

"Hey, hey, hey," says William, pressing him against the door jamb in the kitchen, feeding him a morsel in between kisses, while Nathan grunts futile resistance to the kisses. "We need to keep up the momentum, you know? You heard her." The sheet is in William's hands, then a moment later, it's on the floor. The wall turns into cold stone actuality against Nathan's back as most of William presses skin-to-skin along his front.

"Just let me eat," Nathan says, trying to claw his hands around William's biceps to stop his hands.

"Don't you love me?" William asks, pressing upon him another kiss and a chunk of the softer part of a slice of oven pizza.

"I know it's not real," Nathan manages through grit teeth, turning his face from William's sticky fingers.

"Does that matter?" William asks. He trails the backs of his fingers over Nathan's jaw. "If you want it to be real, that makes it real, and _I_ think you want it to be real. I think you want it all and then some, the way you responded to me up there. Making up for lost time, eh? And if you're going to refuse the food, we should just return to bed."

Nathan wants to feed _himself_. He manages to punch William's arms away - the pizza chunk takes flight - and stagger to the table, grabbing at the rest of what William took out of the cold store. After a few mouthfuls under his own steam, standing up unencumbered, it crashes over him that Mara is still outside with the girl. That if he's doing _anything_ , it should be stopping her. He slams a fist into the table and spins to head back out of the door, shouldering William from his path.

" _Nathan_!" William sounds panicked - Nathan remembers that sometimes he is afraid of Mara. "Hey, come on, who cares about the cook?!"

Nathan cares. She's in danger because of him. He allowed Mara to come back to Haven. He interrupted the cycle in the first place. He left William _alone_ in town. William won't stop him now, physically _or_ with his assertion that a human being is no more than a toy for Mara to experiment upon.

Outside in the corridor is a frozen tableau, but it's nothing like the one he was expecting.

Mara stands with her black palm extended. Nathan prepares to launch forward when he sees Sophie move, scrambling away past Mara. Mara... fails to react at all.

"S-something's wrong," Sophie stutters, and raises her hands. "I didn't do it!"

"Of course you didn't." The curl of a sneer in William's words is briefly contemptuous, but gains anxiety as he steps forward, to become the one pushing Nathan aside in his rush to get closer to Mara. Nathan hangs behind him, knocked off balance more than just physically, unsure what this _is_.

Mara's body is frozen and her gaze fixed, her eyes like glass. William reaches out to catch her shoulders, but she still doesn't react. His plaintive "Honey?" sounds so lost and _strange_ upon the air. He shakes her more vigorously and she only lolls like a catatonic.

William looks back at Nathan like a lost little boy and _begs_ him, "Help me! I've never seen her like this before. What's _wrong_ with her?!"

That might just be the craziest flip Nathan's life has taken so far.

* * *

They put Mara to bed. Nathan strips the sheets and replaces them with clean ones while William holds her and tries to bring her around with soothing words and petting... not so far removed from what he's been doing to Nathan most of the morning. Once the bed's made and Mara is in it, Nathan sits and watches, still feeling hollow and the fact he didn't eat very much in the end little to do with that. William sits on the pillows and continues to hold Mara.

Nathan manages to produce a small amount of saliva to wet a clean corner of the sheets he pulled off the bed and robotically start to rub his skin down, removing the excretions of sex and exertion from his stomach and thighs. He rubs hard enough to turn the skin even redder.

"You've done this before," he accuses a William who's not much interested now. "This... claiming people. Brainwashing them."

William stares up vaguely, but his attention is quickly lost. "She didn't want to do that to _you_." His voice is blank, so many things lurking unexpressed. "Look. I didn't, either. Ish."

"Because Mara _loves me_ ," Nathan mocks, still scrubbing his skin with the sheet. "Because _you_ love me." He can't hate William, can't really hate either of them the way his head's been screwed up, but the bitter contradiction makes his stomach roil psychosomatically. Unless that's anxiety for Mara's health.

"That's right."

" _Ish_?"

"I had fun." William shrugs. "It's been a while. I miss old times."

It's ironic Nathan can't be grateful for the reprieve because he can't contemplate wishing ill on Mara. On two counts, since Mara's state might have repercussions for the phantom of Audrey. He resists the concern for Mara; reminds himself that Mara had said she _wasn't finished_ , and if he's only partially... brain-fucked... he still has more freedom than she'd intended. Perhaps if he's only partially indoctrinated he can unpick what they've tried to do. He doesn't intend to be anyone's toy.

"So much for your 'deal'," he tells William.

That gains him the other man's attention again. "Wasn't _my_ decision..." and then they both glance down at Mara.

She doesn't look like she's sleeping. She doesn't look _peaceful_. Her open eyes sometimes flicker or tremble, even blink. There's tension in the set of her face, and every so often, it shifts. That's more responsive than she was half an hour ago.

" _Some kind of locked-in syndrome_ ," Nathan had guessed, downstairs, in response to William's panicking. Nathan has entertained a casual interest in medical curiosities since he became one. " _Perhaps it's like a memory cascade? She's said before that she still had memories from all those other past lives that she was waiting to absorb. Maybe it just happened._ " It still seems the most reasonable theory. It's scary to watch her, usually so animated and fierce, turned blank. Almost as scary when it's just _Mara_ as when he blinks and looks again, or catches a sideways glimpse, or otherwise allows his thoughts to drift and starts all of a sudden thinking of her as Audrey.

"We need a doctor," William says, gaining a little more life. "Nathan, you need to go to town and fetch a doctor."

Gloria will be just delighted to have him turn up on her doorstep, Nathan is sure.

...Perhaps not Gloria.

"We need to wait," Nathan says. "Give her time to come out of it." There's no good way to get an injured or ill person to the mainland on their tiny boat, and Nathan isn't damned well going to sink to William's depths of kidnapping innocent citizens yet. Getting an airlift ambulance to respond... Well, it may be _possible_ , but he doubts that the risks that will come out of it are less than waiting and hoping. Besides which, who knows if this is something regular doctors can treat?

"We need to do something!"

Nathan stays quiet. He can feel the same nervous, frantic energy William's expressing. They orbit around her, both of them, and are bereft of a purpose with her suddenly gone. He doesn't know what to do other than this - wherever he steps, someone or something he cares about is endangered. It's easier to stay. That may change. His hand scrubs, all but forgotten.

Unbidden, his mind turns back to the original question. "Who were they?"

It comes out like jealousy. In some corner of his psyche, it _is_ jealousy. William looks at him blankly until he spits out, "The _others_ , you bastard. The ones you kept _before_."

"Nothing," William answers, his brow furrowing as if he can't understand why Nathan would ask such a thing. "They were nothing."

The matter of fact way he says it alights Nathan's rage into a blaze. That probably wasn't William's intention. Nathan feels like killing him, but it only takes him halfway to William before the rush of contrary affection prevails and he splutters and spins helplessly, swearing.

"I'm not like them!" he hurls at William, choking on anger and love and hate.

"Of course you're not." Now William sounds _irritated_. His mouth is such a long, unhappy line it almost bisects his face. "It doesn't matter, Nathan! Look at her!" He flails his long arms. "Mara matters!"

"I fucking _love_ you," Nathan shouts in disgust. "She did that to me, _you_ did that to me, and it _doesn't matter_!" This time he makes it across the bed to set his hand to William's throat. He manages to start a good squeezing pressure between his fingers, at which point William is forced to raise both hands to fight him off, and Mara slips from her resting position over William's knees, slumping between them.

They both freeze. But there was nothing voluntary to the movement. Mara's state hasn't changed.

"It _wasn't_ the end goal to make you like _they_ were," William says tightly, with Nathan's fist loosening around his throat. "We're caught up in this toge-"

"What was your 'end goal', then?" Nathan's other hand automatically goes down to straighten and steady Mara's body, the same time as one of William's hands returns from her other side. Nathan despises the moment of unity. He _could_ kill William, he thinks. In _passion_ , he could kill William even now, and break his own heart in so doing, but he could do it.

Break his heart twice - thrice - over.

Because they're linked. Mara, _Audrey..._

Staring down at her absent face, he's almost forgotten that he asked William another question by the time the other man answers. "Connection," William says dully, and Nathan lets his hand fall from the other man's neck, more from surprise than anything else. It isn't applying pressure anymore anyway. "You. Me. Mara."

Nathan stares at him. "Like you and her? That's not possible." If they succeeded at that, he couldn't hide Audrey's presence from them. He'd doom her.

If they succeeded at that, he'd _never_ be free from William and Mara.

"We're not like you." William smiles wryly. "But between the two of us-" he clings to Mara "-we should be able to do it. We _want_ to do it," he adds, earnestly. "You'll live a long time. We could heal you when you got hurt. You could consider it an _honour_." He says that last like it's a very pointed suggestion, like he wants Nathan's fucking _gratitude_ that they chose him.

"And if you die, so do I?" Nathan completes, flatly. "Jesus Christ, why the _fuck_ would I want that?"

"Well," William says, rolling his tongue around his mouth, "I guess that kind of attitude was why we didn't bother to ask." It's bordering on sarcasm.

Which just about sums up everything anyone needs to know about William, Nathan figures.

"It was something we talked about as a last resort," William adds, a bit desperately. "She woke up cranky today. She's been struggling with all those people in her head. She needs to feel safe and loved, and you throwing a fit every time we got intimate was... well. It was wearing. That's all. C'mon, Nathan... Not that you're not cute as can be as a mindless love kitten, but why the hell would we want you that way? I mean, look at the practical issues. You run this place! You _made_ this place! You're our army. Your brain is _not_ dispensable. We just needed a certain level of - love, trust, closeness, blah, blah - to initiate the link, and you're so damn squirmy."

"You think I'm ever going to _trust_ you?" He'd be laughing if it wasn't so insane. Mara and William want to entangle him in their crazy loved-up mind-bond connection? He thinks it would kill him. Nathan has always been protective of his privacy.

"She needs us now." William jerks his chin down. He gathers up Mara. Nathan makes to extract his hands but they end up straying back to her skin. "The rest, we have to put that aside." William stares into him with an earnestness that is new, and Nathan can't really doubt that he's genuinely scared.

A jerky nod climbs Nathan's neck, sneaking up on him. He logs it as forced compassion for William. It isn't nearly so annoying as the way his hand strays to squeeze the other man's shoulder.

Nathan removes himself to sit at the foot of the bed. He consciously looks the other way, but out of the corner of his eye, can't help but keep straying back to watch William stroke Mara's face.

He stinks and he wants a shower. He's not sure he can drag himself to do anything so banal while Mara is like this, and Audrey's fate uncertain.

After a while, he makes himself get up and drag jeans and a shirt on. "I'm going to tidy up downstairs," he says to William, who greets the declaration with no interest whatsoever.

Nathan can hear William talking to Mara softly again, chivvying and compassionate, trying to guide her back to wakefulness, even while he's stomping his feet down the steps.

* * *

Mara drifts while the memories tumble around her, unable to find purchase on any of them, unable to make _choices._ She has become so many people that she no longer knows who she wants to be.

Perhaps it's fitting irony to be defeated by her own over-abundance of choices after raising her hand to take all of Nathan's away. But sympathy for him remains a fallacy, after Audrey Parker gave her to him, unwilling, body and spirit. Love him? She never had her choice over that! Sympathy for him, pity for him, _mercy_ for him? No. If she must accept him, he will be hers on her terms.

Yet it seems that was the point upon which something in her rebelled.

It rose and paralysed her. From stripping down Nathan for a re-definition of what lay between them, she felt the rebellion rising from her core. She thought she had conquered it, but the surge resumed in the quiet, without her men there. She'd been so blithely confident in her control, standing before the frightened girl. Raised her hand to inflict the punishment that would make the woman regret her disobedience, and-

 _Where did the aether go from her palm?_ she wonders. It's an uneasy thought to surface out of the roiling confusion.

There are too many other voices inside her. Did one of them just seize aether in the very moment of its activation? Considering that the biggest part of her ranks are faded and used up, dark, seething, nagging, _ignorable_ voices, there is only one real suspect from her gallery of traitors.

It's _paranoia_ to consider it, because it should not be possible.

It should _not be_.

She _is_ Audrey Parker. Audrey never _was_ , a set of memories pasted over her soul, not a real woman with her own drive and will and anima. If something inside her is fighting her, when all that _is_ and _can be_ inside her is _herself_...

...Then something is very, very wrong.

Time passes. She hears William's voice. She hears Nathan, _arguing_. As ever, arguing. She did not quash him. More than the traitor half of her is pleased by this. Knowing that William and Nathan are there gives her renewed strength. Knowing Nathan is still stubborn perversely invigorates her. It was satisfying to have him malleable, but also disconcerting. She truly did not mean it. She loves his determination best.

She can only see them when the angle allows. Even if she wants to look at them, her body won't obey. Sometimes the capacity to see deserts her entirely and she lies in darkness even with her eyes still open, as though rendered blind. Her body is a battleground where no-one occupies enough key positions to push for victory. Only when one side or the other prevails will she regain capacity to move and speak and cast her eyes where she wishes again.

She is aware of them fighting, and then Nathan leaves. She is aware of William, calling to her, his voice creating a light to guide her back. It is _good_ that Nathan left, she realises, because Nathan empowers the other far more than he does her. William is the one who gives _her_ strength.

 _Self_ is a tricky, deceptive arena for combat, where everything - enemy, ally, battlefield, weapon - is some variation of _I_. Thus, she doesn't recognise fully that the _I_ suddenly rising up is not the one who started out in control.

Instead, she feels the giddy euphoria of victory as the other half of her sinks back and disappears beneath the dark surface of the mental waters.

She wakes slowly, and the comfort of being held and loved turns unpleasant in gradual steps. Imaginary spiders' feet crawl up her spine. She opens her eyes with heavy dread to affirm visually what lies behind the contrasts of chill air and warm hands on her skin.

"Oh my God." Bypassing thought, the words emerge in disgust, because she's _naked_ in William's arms, and there is not enough revulsion in the world.

He gapes down into her face; his features stricken, his frozen expression far more stupid than she knows him to be. And _him_? He knows instantly, shaping her name on his lips in a horrified whisper.

"A... _Audrey_?"


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Audrey punches out at William, breaking his grip with a move that comes as instinctive as breathing - though both are a bit of a struggle at the moment - and rolls away from him fast. "Get off me, you _creep!_ "

It matters less that she's naked as she springs off the bed than that she's no longer naked and being pawed over by William. The vague pull of attraction she feels towards him, knowing he's slime and she _shouldn't_ , isn't enough to excuse him this. She looks around for a weapon and takes a few more stumbling steps to grab a long metal poker from the medieval-chic open fireplace in the far wall of the bedroom.

She was in William's _bed_.

- _Mara_ , she tells herself. She tries to slow her pounding heart. She was Mara then, and Mara makes her own choices, the same as Sarah, or Lucy, or any of them. It's an old argument, an old fear: Where has her body been? Who has it been with? Only the _evil_ part is new. Protests beat like the wings of trapped butterflies deep inside the cage of Audrey's chest: Mara is wounded by her rejection of William. Mara's presence is much closer than it ever was. Close enough it almost seems Audrey could reach down into that darkness and pull out memories that interest her, and if she was careful, if she was selective, the consequences might not diminish her.

"No, no, no, no, no, no." William says words fast-stuttering like a machine gun rattle. "You can't be Audrey Parker. You know who you are now. Audrey's gone. Audrey's-"

"Fuck you, William!" She swings the poker as she lunges back around toward the bed. She knows now that William never wanted anything but her destruction. Subsumed by Mara, existing in phantom snatches, she has watched them toy with Nathan... Although, truly, her clearest memories of the last few weeks are of Nathan telling her about things, and she knows he doesn't tell her everything. But she has seen what they did to him in his haunted demeanour, in his scars, and she wants to make them _pay._

William flinches back and slides from the bed with a thump and a yell. He scuttles upright. "No, no, this isn't pos-" He dodges the next swing but slams into a wall. If she weren't so furious, it might be funny to watch him lurch and stumble, falling over his feet to get away from her. It's still deeply satisfying.

Audrey frowns down at the blunt end of the poker as she steps after him. Maybe she should redress the balance for the liberties he's taken with Nathan right now. William's face flinches in panic as if he can tell what she's thinking, and he tips his head back and does the very last thing she expects.

" _Nathan!_ " William howls.

It freezes her just long enough for him to get to the door. His hands scrape at the door jamb. He's still falling over his feet, looking over his shoulder for her actions more than minding his own. A few bare stone steps lead down from the room's threshold. Less than a foot to the left of the door, outside on the landing, is the start of the grand staircase that curls down to the ground floor of the castle.

If he falls and breaks something, she won't be sorry.

"Nathan! Na-!" As he starts to yell a third time, he chokes on the name and stops. He gapes at Audrey again. His lower lip trembles.

"No, he's not going to help you," Audrey hisses. "Not against _me_." She whispers a seething promise, waggling the poker very minimally in the direction of his groin. "I'm going to castrate you."

William manages to catch the low blow, sealing his hands around the end of the poker. "Audrey... _stop_." His breaths are still harsh, but she can see he's starting to overcome his shock - devastation, even. "You hurt me, you still hurt yourself, remember? I don't believe you'll escape completely unscathed even if you _do_ aim there." She takes the residual hint of mirth in his voice for habit.

"I might risk that." It's the first time in weeks she's been able to _do_ anything.

But there are footsteps, or at least there's faint padding _noise_ , coming up the staircase, attached to Nathan's very reluctantly concerned call of, "William?"

Abruptly, Audrey is struck by the promise that in just moments they'll be together again in the flesh. "Nathan, hurry!" she shouts. She flicks her head at William. "Get out of the way."

He surrenders his grip on the poker to sidle back to the bed, toeing fallen objects on the floor. His sullen gaze never strays for more than half a second away from her, even when his head is bowed.

When Nathan walks in, Audrey grabs onto him and wraps him in her arms. "Oh, Nathan, _Nathan_..." It feels like an eternity since she's been herself and they've been together.

She keeps the poker held downward away from their bodies and half an eye on William, all the same.

Audrey tells herself it's only because he'd so little expectation of the alternative that Nathan's arms feel reluctant embracing her and he says, uncertainly, "Mara?"

"It's not Mara," she says next to his ear. "It's not Mara."

His body stiffens further before he starts to relax into her and then she hears and feels his heart start pounding so fast it's almost frightening. _"Audrey_..." He whispers her name in a trembling voice. "You're back."

"Yeah... yeah..." She wills him not to let slip, because William is still there and listening, that Audrey has been around before this, for all this time. Though there may be no avoiding revealing that now. She has no way of knowing what this - her return to consciousness and control in Mara's body - is or means.

William's face is sour and pinched, shut-out and sidelined. The naked lines of his long body are filled with unhappiness, and she wishes him all the more of it.

Nathan's eyes flicker, uncertain. "Are you _really_ back?" His hands clutch her, trying to convince himself she's no hallucination or ghost, this time. "Really you?" He searches her eyes, retreating a step, hands staying on her shoulders. He's searching for Mara, suspecting a cruel joke.

"This is real," Audrey promises him. "I'm back."

"Noooo..." William's hands fist in his short hair, body twisted over, face reddening. "Mara! Honey!"

" _Shut up_ ," Audrey barks the words viciously, even though the stirrings within her aren't strong enough to be a problem.

"William-" For a moment, Nathan's face flickers with conflict as he looks at the other man. It's almost sympathy. Audrey prods tentatively at Mara's recent memories for the reason and it takes her breath away. But Nathan's still speaking. As William looks back, face open in hope, Nathan bluntly tells him, " _Go away_."

"W-what?" Audrey's belligerently thrilled to see William so comedically crushed.

"You said," Nathan grits his teeth and forces the words out at a slow, even pace, and it looks as though it's an effort, on some level, but he makes them come all the same, "if Audrey Parker comes back, she's mine. _She's Audrey Parker now_."

"That was - that -" The stricken man flails for purchase.

"We should tie him up," Audrey says, pulling back from Nathan's arms to have a better run at William with the poker. "This place _has_ to have a dungeon. Right?" He made it for Mara, after all.

Nathan shakes his head blankly. "It'll be okay."

Audrey knows she can't trust Nathan's judgement where William is concerned. _They did that to him_... Her body turns cold thinking of Mara trying to use Nathan's affection for _her_ to turn him into their creature, to force him to love William. Sickness rises in her. _That_ , the physical violations... In Mara's memories, hers the hand that commits those acts.

"I don't want him trailing behind us, harping about Mara, trying to bring her back," Audrey says. "I want to deal with him."

Nathan looks conflicted.

"Don't do it, buddy," William begs. He's raised his hands in response to Audrey's new posturing with the poker.

"William..." Nathan begins slowly. " _Shut up_." To Audrey he says, "There's no dungeon. Why would I indulge Mara like that?"

"Then I want him tied face-down to the bed with this poker rammed up his ass," Audrey says.

"He'll enjoy it," Nathan murmurs.

"Just find some rope."

She expects Nathan to leave the room, anticipates a free run at William while he does that, but instead he shuts his eyes and stands very still. After a few seconds, his hands start to move, aping weaving motions. His face breaks out a trickle of sweat. Then a few coils of rope appear in his hands, seeming paltry for the effort that went into making them. He hands one to her.

"Get on the bed," Audrey orders William. Nathan goes and strips the sheets from it, leaving only the unadorned mattress. "And be grateful Nathan's here to make me be nice, because you _don't_ deserve it."

"Oh, Mara," he breathes, not moving. "I always love it when you play with _ropes_."

Audrey blinks and her senses spiral a bit. Apparently he's decided to change tactics. "Nathan," she orders tightly.

The two men tussle. After a moment it becomes clear it's not so much a fight as William trying to turn in Nathan's arms so they're pressed front to front, then he's pushing into the grip, going for a limpet-like embrace, and it's Nathan who's trying to shove William away.

"Nathan...! Don't make me lose you both!" He relinquishes his leverage in order to cup Nathan's face with his hands, stroke it, pull their lips together for a kiss. "Don't you love me?"

"It's not _real_." William's lips mush against Nathan's hair as he not only turns his face aside, but jerks forward an attempted headbutt. "I still _know that_ , bastard! I'm choosing her." He shoves with his hands and curls a tripping foot around William's ankles, sending the other man sprawling onto the bed. He retrieves the rope from the floor and catches William's wrist. Their struggle isn't overly successful in getting any numb-fingered knots tied until Audrey joins in, beating down William's efforts to grope Nathan or wriggle free with jabs of the poker.

"Unk." She grunts as she feels an impact in her own shoulder, hard enough to bruise. He's right that their connection remains intact.

"Nathan, you can't leave me here like this!"

Nathan silently threads the rope between the decorative whorls of the bed head and grabs William's other wrist. He _has_ , Audrey notes, opted to tie him face-up.

Leaving William wrenching to free his hands, Nathan takes the black box from the night stand, a widening of his eyes betraying his apprehension. It's lucky that apparently William won't bring his nasty toys out to fight them, but Nathan's obviously alarmed by the oversight, glaring as he shoves the box into the back of his jeans. Audrey abandons the poker to catch William's legs, and the rope she has is just long enough to tie one ankle to each end bedpost, leaving a trailing length between.

"I'm not staying here all day!" William insists, bucking up from the mattress in tantrum while Audrey dresses quickly in Mara's clothes, only because the other choice is nothing. "Nathan, c'mon-"

Nathan averts his face and his mouth twists sourly.

"Come on." Audrey intentionally echoes William as she places her hand in his and pulls him away, toward the door and the stairs. "We need to get out of here." If they can't kill William, and she has no idea if the ropes will keep him for long, then maybe they can at least strand him on the island. "We need to reach Duke and Dwight."

Nathan has William's box. Can she access enough of Mara's memories without losing herself to help fix Troubles, _really_ help fix the Troubles this time? Her heart picks up and her breath goes panicky thinking about it. Mara squashed her effortlessly before. Can she risk it again?

They clatter down the steps hand in hand, and she's so keyed up she jumps out of her skin as another person unexpectedly speaks from the shadows of a doorway.

Give that the person says, "Oh my God," and tries to frantically back off, their appearance is not particularly imposing. Audrey's definitely too jumpy. The woman hits the wall and stumbles. "You're better!" she says, and, panic increasing, "It wasn't me!"

"Who is she?" Audrey asks Nathan, deciding it's better to _ask_ for an explanation than risk poking Mara's memories. "What did she do?"

"This is Sophie. Mara and William brought her here to cook. She didn't do anything." Nathan pats down the woman's hysteria, as her voice rises to protest. "It's okay. This is Audrey. She's not Mara. I know they look the same."

Audrey can sense something beginning inside Sophie, ready to fly off from her, ready to explode. It's nothing good. She'll be all right: she has her immunity. Nathan... has forcefields. Whether those will be enough, she isn't sure. She grabs the woman's wrists. "Don't! Stop, relax, _breathe_. It isn't going to happen. You're safe right now." Whatever it was she sensed, it drains off, averted for now.

 _What was that? What was any of that? Is this what it feels like to have Mara's full powers at her command?_

"Are you going off the island?" Sophie's eyes fall on Nathan, widening. "Please... _please_... I'm sorry about before. Please take me back!" She's looking at Nathan like she expects to be refused _by him_.

"We'll take you back," Audrey says.

"If you lose control in town, a lot of people could die," Nathan opposes. "Audrey, it's not a good idea."

"Nathan-!" she starts first with shock, then catches herself and _sighs_. No breather, then, no chance to strengthen herself before she's tested. "I'll... I can try to... remove it." Mara did this; _she_ did this. Accessing the memories makes that fact all the more acutely undeniable, seeing her hand imprint this horror. But when she pulls shakily into the present again, she knows what Mara did and thinks she might be able to reverse it. The world only wavers a little as she forces her eyes open. "I need to touch your skin," she tells the woman. "I need you not to flinch away."

"She'll help you," Nathan says, nodding earnestly.

"I don't believe it," Sophie chokes. "This is some kind of sick joke. You're the _same_! I can see that you are. You'll do something else awful."

"Hey, hey." Audrey says, holding shy of grabbing her again. "I know that you were frightened. I know they brought you here against your will. But this is not a trick. They wouldn't _need_ to trick you, all right? You're already in their power."

"I wouldn't play along with it for their amusement, either," Nathan says, which earns him a sidelong look, and he flushes. With both women looking at him, he protests, "Some things _I_ didn't have a choice about."

Audrey touches his wrist, but she feels a little _jump_ under his skin as she does. Of course... both Mara's and William's touch is the same as hers.

She wonders if, after this, she'll ever be able to touch him the same way again.

"Okay, we're doing this." Audrey shakes her head and refocuses her attention. She frowns at Sophie, who nervously pulls up her shirt to mid-chest. There's a handprint, alternating glowing black and gold, on her belly. Audrey reaches out and matches her hand to the mark that her fingers so perfectly fit.

It she feels herself enveloped by the Trouble; it feels like a living thing; it almost _speaks_ to her. It writhes under her palm as she calls it back. Darkness rushes in on her, and she only just clings to herself - she thinks she clings to herself - as she wavers on her feet and Nathan catches her. She holds her black palm out, disgusted and uncertain what to do about it. Mara would call the black substance - _aether_ , her mind whispers - back into a ball and re-use it, but Audrey has no use for it. As though her disgust prompts the decision, it starts to peel off of her skin, falling in a shower of disintegrating flakes.

Nathan's intake of breath is loud next to her ear. Sophie is wide-eyed, watching. "Is it gone?"

"It's gone," Audrey says, feeling unwell.

"Well done." Nathan hugs her from behind. There's so _much_ in his voice. Love, of course, but it's also thick with relief. Gratification. Benediction. _Salvation_ , Audrey thinks, but that initiates a sense of doom inside her. She thinks she nearly lost herself just now. How many times can she do it before Mara takes over?

Yet how can she _not_?

"Do you need me to remove anything before we get out of here?" she asks Nathan, trembling inside. Mara heaped curses on him, and those will be harder to remove, more dangerously personal, more tightly tied to his essence and Mara's.

He shakes his head. "I can hold it together. We need to get away, first."

They turn for the door. Nathan stops at the rack next to it and says, "You should wear their coats. William's is big, but it'll be cold at sea." Audrey thinks, amid a tumult of other things, of him taking extra effort to remember discomforts they'll feel that he can't-

Something moves beyond Nathan's shoulder.

"Look!" she points urgently. It's a black sphere, just hovering in the air. Nathan grabs for the thing - with a bare hand! - but it loops out of the way and back up the stairs, where they came from. A small flurry of others cloud up out of Nathan's pants and follow it. William's box - _damn it_ : it was in the back pocket of Nathan's jeans...

"Don't!" Audrey catches the back of Nathan's shirt as he swears and gives chase. It's clear the things are moving way too fast to catch. "Let's just go. Taking the boat will still trap him."

"I'm sorry," Nathan says tightly. "I don't know everything he can do with them yet."

"It's all right. Let's get out before he comes down." She feels so much at siege for her _self_ that it seems unfair she has to bolster Nathan from his misery. But then William and Mara haven't left him much for himself, and he's been fighting for all of the weeks when she could not.

Go, she thinks, like a drumbeat inside her. _Go_. She doesn't want to stay here, surrounded by what's happened on this island. The memories are too close to the bone... _Get out. Out of their castle_... She can't believe that Mara had Nathan build a _castle_.

Apparently she muttered that aloud, because Nathan says, voice subdued, "She didn't mean it. But I knew it would take _time_ , and I... well, I got into it."

She can't believe Nathan built a castle to _frustrate Mara_. Then again, that sort of thing does seem to have been his strategy all along.

There's a great thumping and clamour from the steps as they're grabbing at coats and pushing at the door, and Audrey staggers as pain punches her hip and left leg in quick succession, then her right side. William comes rolling down the steps, lands on his face - another flare of pain - and scrambles toward them, half on hands and knees. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. You're not leaving here without me!"

Nathan's arms are already around Audrey, supporting her. Now, William's hands land on her roughly as he barges in to shove them apart.

Audrey breaks his grip with a practised move. "You're not my _friend_ , William! I don't want you near me!"

Nathan's eyes crawl uncomfortably around. William's touch makes his cheeks go pink again, Audrey notices, and that enrages her. The memories of what they did to him rise... and she chokes and rabbit-punches William in the neck, then jabs the nerve cluster of the arm he's using to hold onto Nathan. It's another kind of violation again, what Mara made her do to Nathan, and that she has the memories of it _through Mara's eyes_. She tastes vomit in the back of her throat. Her arm hurts, and her neck.

"Stop," Nathan protests, through her dizziness. "You're hurting _yourself_."

"Thanks, Nate," coughs William. Audrey doesn't trust that Nathan didn't stop her partially for his sake. She sees William's hand sneak a caress over Nathan's wrist, and Nathan not flinch from it, instead look at William with glazed eyes. "You're not seriously going to leave me, are you?"

"Get _off_ him," Audrey snaps. She starts to calculate how much pain she's prepared and able to endure to put William out of the picture. To see him _punished_. She reaches out to knock him away from Nathan again.

That's the moment when she loses herself.

* * *

Mara rises up, reborn of anger. It isn't a victory. She re-emerges in _fear_ and devastation. She had thought the sanctity of her identity was on its way to recovery. She had thought she had _safety_. Nothing is safe anymore! Nathan is looking at her in abject concern, seeing someone else, hands reaching out, and she _hates_ him. William's face is wary and hopeful. Their link isn't functioning so well as usual, but he's surely receiving _something_. She can sense enough to know he doesn't understand the full implications of what just happened.

Mara does.

Mara knows what was done to her. The spirit of Audrey Parker _did not_ just take over her mind, because _Audrey_ doesn't exist. _Audrey_ is no more than a memory set, the most fully intact one out of her many years of torture, with the emotions that go with those memories still fully raw and real, but nonetheless the one Mara chose to integrate first so as to better deal with Nathan. And because she has never been a coward, and should rather face the way she's been compromised head-on.

Audrey reappearing as a distinct identity by definition cannot happen, unless there is something very wrong with _Mara_.

She fought them all the way, but they marked her. Perhaps they conquered her after all. Evidently they twisted her enough that there's a part of her that _wants_ to be Audrey more than Mara - if not precisely good and sweet then at least more invested in fixing Troubles than creating them.

The indoctrination of many years has taken hold. She's doing this to herself, now, without Howard or the Barn to enforce it. Somehow, she must find a way to stop this before everything is taken from her and she ceases to be Mara at all. Forever.

"Audrey?" Nathan's voice is cautious.

"Honey?" William's response is hedging its bets.

" _Audrey_? Come on..." Nathan's hand reaches out to touch her.

She gouges her palms with her fingernails - remembering, now, lost conversations and moments with Nathan, going all the way back to their first night in the void. 'Audrey' is only now sharing sufficiently close space with her regular consciousness to present those events in her memory, but has never truly been _gone_.

"Traitor..." She seethes the word through a raw, cracking throat as her eyes burn with unwanted moisture. Nathan unhands her and steps swiftly backward.

" _No_ ," he says. She witnesses the world falling away from his eyes.

 _Good_. Apt that he should feel it, too, when he has conspired to hide this from her. It may already be too late to do anything about it.

"Mara!" William says, delight shot through his voice, in direct contradiction with her mood. That rarely happens, with the nature of their minds' connection. But he is _just so happy_ to have her back, and their connection feels... dwindled, not as strong as it was and should be.

In that moment, Mara hates him almost as much as she hates Nathan.

But she _needs_ William, who knows her mind and will support her. As for Nathan, killing him last time was a mistake she will not repeat, but she refuses to tolerate this. What kind of lesson is _escaping punishment_ , after all?

 _"Nathan_ ," she growls, and already there's black coating her palm.

Nathan has seen this look on her before. He abandons pride and turns and runs. With Mara blocking the door to the outside, he heads deeper into the castle, forgoing the main staircase to open a door and hare up a narrow flight of service stairs into the areas he knows better than she does.

Mara gives chase like a panther. She prefers that physical exertion be left to her underlings, but _Audrey_ is still so much alive inside her, who chases down criminals and solutions to Troubles, and the taste of the hunt sparks new fires of excitement, instincts she never had. _Hah_. She appreciates intensely that Audrey will help her catch and punish Nathan.

" _Mara! Honeypot! Sweetie! No!"_ She can hear William coming after her, his naked feet pounding on stone. The fact he's left the girl alone is her least concern. They can find another cook.

She corners Nathan in a storage chamber off the kitchens, in the heart of the castle. Trying to hide from her will _not_ work. Maybe she can't sense him with the bright certainty she can - _ought_ \- William, but after what they put in place this morning, unfinished as it remains, he will always be a dim spark on her internal map.

"Mara," he says, voice flat, face whipping up from its bowed position, from his hiding place behind a box. His panic wars with his pain. He chooses the latter. "Audrey, I _know_ you're still in there. You can come back. You can fight her." He's rising onto one knee, edging upright as he speaks.

Mara picks up the nearest heavy object and hurls it at him, knocking him down again. " _Bastard!_ Do not call to her!"

"Audrey-!" He will be persistent unto death.

She has known from the beginning that Nathan is not her true ally. Nathan will not support her. He was happy when she was consumed. Her demise would make him smile. She pelts him with the contents of the store room, anything that comes to hand, knocking him down, kicks him while he's on the ground, as he grabs at her feet and calls for Audrey.

That name...! Mara has to make an effort to breathe without choking on her anger, stifled by the weight of knowing that she is _still not safe_. All the years she struggled for her freedom, within the Barn's tangles, the threads of others' memories, and it is not _over_. Now, when she thought she had her identity back... she could be compromised at any time, and Nathan will _revel_ in it.

"This is _me_ , you wretch. Not that false shell, _me_! There is no Audrey Parker!" She aims for his face and arms with her bare feet, trying to score his vulnerable flesh with the bony part of her heel.

"She came back," Nathan says, stubborn to the ends of the earth. "She'll beat you in the end."

It is entirely the wrong thing to say.

William falls through the door, gasping for breath, as she's taking Nathan's face in her hands. "Mara, Mara, _no_ , not after last time..." His begging comes entirely too late.

" _Die_ ," Mara hisses.

William grabs her and pulls her back, wrenching her arms from Nathan so roughly it hurts. Nathan's body is already starting to glow with an internal heat. He gapes, draws in a breath, and starts to say something through his open mouth, but the faint orange glow coming through his skin grows stronger. Then, his skin is _red_ , darkening to black like coals. A spark of life remains in his eyes at the moment they melt in their sockets. Lifeless, now, his form flops as far as arms and knees, but the charred rigidity of his blackened flesh makes it seem like he's holding himself upright in death. William makes an anguished noise. Mara grabs onto him and pulls him back to the doorway. Things close to Nathan are already smoking from the intense heat.

"What did you _do_?" William wails.

" _Wait_."

She would not be foolish enough to cut Nathan down irreparably a second time. The charred form falls forward on the stone floor, and with the impact, the black shell that was his skin cracks and starts to disintegrate.

There's pink, undamaged skin underneath. Nathan rises, grunting, muttering, groaning in confusion as his burned coating flakes off to reveal new skin everywhere. His clothes are gone, but his flesh is whole. He totters to his feet to take a single step, and William's face clears in relief as he moves forward to catch him.

This time, Mara lets him get burned. As the orange glow, faint at first, takes hold of Nathan a second time, William jumps back from the heat with a cry. Nathan raises his hands and stares at them while they glow more fiercely, until his eyes pop and dribble down his face again, and he falls back to the floor as a burned husk.

"Mara," he grunts, crawling toward her as life returns and his skin begins to flake and renew. "Mara, you _bitch_..."

She narrows her eyes and backs William and herself through the door, out into the corridor. It wasn't entirely well-thought, she reflects, in an oddly calm fashion, for he still cannot _feel_. She would have preferred him to feel her wrath.

Still, as he gets no more than three feet and burns to embers again, she cannot deny the appropriateness of the Trouble, fuelled by passion and despair, eating him up and renewing him simultaneously in an ever repeating cycle.

William is leaning back against the corridor wall, sagging in shock throughout the fourth repeat. Nathan's forcefields try to kick in to protect him and everything loose in the room is flattened as the invisible walls crash outward, even to the point where the stone walls of the castle shake. But Nathan still burns.

As he renews again, Mara kneels beside him and catches his face, pinning his new eyes with hers. "I will see that you love only _me_ ," she tells him. "For I intend to eradicate every trace of Audrey. You may enjoy the distraction of this Trouble until you are prepared to change your mind. Be sure to keep your guards alert, or I shall be further displeased."

She backs away as he's starting to get too hot to handle, dodging from his clutching fingers. He manages to place a hand on her calf, burning through her clothing, leaving an ironic palm print on her skin. She gestures William back and then slams and locks the heavy door, shutting Nathan in. She waits outside the door while the cycle comes around again to him gasping, semi-coherent.

"Command your armies from here," she orders, to make sure he got that. The advantage of him being unable to feel is that he should remain lucid enough of the time to ensure his practical functions stay online. If he were to feel the agony of the constant immolations, she wouldn't have that. "If you don't, there's no reason for me not to let you feel this."

William pushes off from the wall and staggers after her as she marches down the corridor. They hear Nathan fizzle and burn again behind them. "You can't leave him like that!"

"I can and will." She lets her feet carry her onward. She still isn't feeling this. Perhaps Nathan's numbness has spread to her, in crisis.

"I love him! _You_ love him!"

" _He_ loves Audrey Parker!" she snaps, turning on William, on the verge of violence. The command she thought she had is undermined. How much of Nathan's willingness to stay was only ever about the presence of that phantom?

She doesn't want to alienate William. She takes deep breaths. The ground is unstable beneath her. Everywhere she turns there could be traps. There is so much she has to do.

"We always knew that," William retorts.

Mara cannot be bothered to truly explain. Cannot muster patience for words where there should be a link strong enough for intuitive understanding. She shoves at him the bundle of memories associated with Audrey's 'ghost' and William makes a startled noise as they hit him, then goes quiet. Momentarily. "That's... unexpected. But the way he acted, that isn't anything we didn't know. Mara, _Mara_ , we're more than halfway to making him one of us...!"

And that is a process of seduction and guile, not cruelty, not punishment. Mara snorts. "Go find the girl," she tells William. "Before Nathan's _things_ kill her, or she discovers the boat."

William hesitates, but he goes. Mara hovers in uncertainty, as it occurs to her she doesn't trust him not to go back and try to release Nathan himself.

It would be dangerous and foolish, to muddle with such a potent Trouble, created by somebody else and wrapped up, moreover, in Nathan's complicated array of pre-existing Troubles. She'll know if he does that, and can take him to task on it.

She lets him go. Then Mara returns to the living room, curls herself up in a plush chair, and tries to figure out how to make herself unassailable again.

* * *

Mara sits, and sits, and is aware of the afternoon stretching, into evening, moving around her. But she is still, because she does not know where she can move that is _safe_. Inaction, right now, seems the safest. She examines, cautiously, the memories of the spectre that would reach out to Nathan while she slept. It makes sense, now, of so many mornings waking with fragments of sentences, in her voice or Nathan's, playing at the edges of her brain. Those conversations were real.

In a way, she has been wooing Nathan to remain with her in her sleep from the very beginning.

But they are converging dangerously, if she can remember the experiences of the alter, if 'Audrey Parker' can access memories that are hers without becoming her.

She fears that it's too late. Nathan, who knew, has betrayed her, and any opportunity to salvage her identity is gone.

Nathan would _always_ betray her.

As she sits and ponders on it, her anger dulls, having too many other things to contend with - and William is correct. She always knew what Nathan was and would do. She used the taunt that she encompassed all that was left of Audrey specifically to tie him to her. It isn't altogether his fault that Audrey materialised and those proclamations became manifestly true.

Hit and miss whether she expected he might betray her to the outside world sooner or later anyway. She could not expect him to betray _Audrey_ to _her_.

Still, he deserves his punishment no less. They can resume their efforts to bind him to them later. In the meantime, it would be detrimental to have Nathan any more present inside her head, given the pull he exercises upon Audrey. It is as well that they didn't finish yet.

Mara has been aware for a while of a lot of noise from the rest of the castle, but has ignored it, considering it William's responsibility and far less important than the things she has to contemplate. At least, she is satisfied to ignore it until it knocks upon the door to her room.

Specifically, William knocks; very tentatively, but he pushes straight in, after, without waiting for a reply. The girl is hanging over his arm like a deflated sex doll - _literally_ : she is flat, and draped, flopping with his movements. Mara can see a new handprint on her face, which is virtually two dimensional. The expression on the flattened features is an entertaining mixture of surprise and horror. And - Mara sees it shift - also conscious.

"What is it?" Mara demands. She can hear more noise beyond him somewhere. Things breaking. Her stomach rumbles at the reminder there are things which exist outside of this room, joining in the clamour. Unhappily, she reflects that Nathan may well by now have destroyed the kitchens.

"I need you," William begs. He looks harried. His face is reddened and some of the hair on his forehead is wispy and thin, as though caught too near flames.

"I _told_ you to _leave him_ ," Mara says sullenly. The passion and fury has had time to subside, but she is still very irked. William usually obeys her wishes. He loves Nathan too much, and he has always been kinder than she is, favouring softer persuasions.

"It's not that simple," William says, and she senses he would have left her alone if he could. "Nathan got out. I don't know how. Half of the castle is - it's _flattened_. There's structural damage. Stupid forcefields. And those _things_ of his attacked me... Me! I think he's losing it, honey." His mouth twists. " _Definitely_ his temper. Maybe more."

Mara blinks at him slowly. All right, she locked Nathan in a room with a wooden door, even if the wood was thick and tough. It's not unreasonable that he should be loose. She also supposes she should have expected the tantrum.

"Very well." After hours spent paralysed in fear, it's with a dull disinterest that she stands and moves again. Something in her has stopped caring that every step is one taken over a precipice. Her body keenly informs her that she needs a bathroom. She supposes she must deal with Nathan first. _Quickly_.

"I tried to reverse it," William admits nervously, voice hushed behind her as they creep - he _creeps_ \- toward all the noise, which quiets and then rises every couple of minutes with Nathan's immolation and rebirth cycle. So she made of him a phoenix. Her mouth curls. It's fitting, after he managed to survive the volcano world.

She knows how he did that now.

William stutters on with his explanation. "It's too much a tangle in there. I - there's not enough time to figure it out before the cycle kicks in again." He unconsciously brushes his palm, which is scorched. Mara looks down: she hadn't noticed the small pains, preoccupied with her thoughts. "He's really pissed," William adds.

Nathan, burning to ashes and reviving instantly, is a destructive force now wrecking the dining chamber. The furniture he created is charred and splintered. William _just_ manages to turn in time to shield the skein of a woman over his arm with his own body as another forcefield shoots out at random, before Nathan burns again.

"Hey!" William yells at the charred human shape on the floor, as it starts to sluggishly move again. "Nathan, stop being an _ass_. You almost killed Sophie."

Nathan's reply is a collection of expletives. Mara supposes that's only to be expected when you've spent half the day living in thirty second snatches in between dying in flames and resurrection.

Mara goes to him, ignoring the flick of another forcefield that cannot touch her, but which makes William curse. She ignores, too, the shadow figures that appear in the corners of the room and start to advance toward her. "Really, Nathan? You think I will be fooled that you could ever truly hurt me?"

She kneels down and watches while he burns for one last time, as his eyes turn vacant and melt, as his body crumbles, then fills out again and starts to revive.

Mara sighs, because this is dangerous, she is sure, and not because he might burn her. But she cups her palm over the latest handprint even as his skin becomes whole enough to see it. He struggles against her, hands rising to clutch and fight.

" _Stop_."

The moment holds its breath. Everyone there does, certainly - maybe even Sophie the Inflatable Cook. Then... nothing. Nathan doesn't burn. He looks up at Mara with nervous, fearful eyes as she removes her hand. She realises he could not know that she was releasing him rather than ensuring that he would feel again in order that he should feel himself burn to death on infinite repeat.

Nathan lurches away from her, staring around at William, Sophie, the _mess_ he has caused, and scrabbling to get his legs under him. Then his eyes go vacant and his body drops as emphatically as ever it did on the repeating cycle, planting the side of his face and his shoulder into the stone floor with a meaty slap.

Mara gives an involuntary cry and hurries over to him. Her fingers go to his neck. But his pulse is strong, his breathing harsh and visible. The Trouble she inflicted on him for punishment has even, she notices with unexpected pleasure, regenerated his hair, as well as done wonders for the pre-existing burns.

"Unconscious," she declares to wide-eyed William, who breathes out in relief. "The Trouble exhausted him, I think." She glances at the windows. It is night, and she is still Mara, and she realises that she is very tired. "Take him up to bed," she orders William. "I'll follow in a while."

William gives an acknowledging grunt and gestures vaguely with his draped arm. "What should I do with our inflatable cook? We can blow her up any time we want to eat, now."

"Take her to the kitchen and hang her with the tea towels until we need her, then. No, wait." Mara reaches out her hand. "I'll do that. Put Nathan to bed. Clean him up first." She wrinkles her nose at the burnt smell that clings to him, mingled with sweat and fear.

She takes the wretched thing from William's arm and leaves him with his task. She hangs Sophie on the doorknob while she uses the bathroom.

Nathan has done a lot of damage. She shakes her head as she follows the trail back to the storeroom, which is near the kitchens. The door is burned through with a vaguely-human shape. He must have stood up and leaned upon it for several cycles to char right through it. He could only move a matter of feet at a time in between the violent auto-destruct and reset, but he made it halfway around her home in his campaign of destruction.

Her mixed feelings would be improved by being secure in her own identity, but in general she is pleased with him. He is being honed into a weapon of startling destructive power. One fit to be wielded by, of course, her hand.

She puts Sophie in the kitchen. Perhaps she only imagines the flattened woman to be glaring at her.

Mara returns to their bedchamber to find William is just carrying a still-unconscious Nathan to the bed. Both men are slightly damp and smell of orange blossom soap.

Mara lets him put his burden down in the centre of the bed, then leans over to stroke Nathan's hair. It's tousled from a vigorous towelling, and soft. It's a funny thing to smile about among all else this day has brought. Nathan doesn't stir.

"He hasn't shown any sign of waking," William tells her, lying down on the other side of Nathan. "Our first bath together, and he was snoring the whole time. I'd have hoped for more responsiveness." His hand brushes over Nathan's hip, and he adjusts how they're both lying until his partial erection is buried against the crease of Nathan's ass. "You don't mind, do you?"

Mara does not particularly want physical comfort and does not want to touch either of them right now. That _is_ the benefit of _three_. "Do as you please," she allows benignly.

She doesn't care if William intends to fuck Nathan while he's unconscious - or indeed, if he already has, their two bodies sliding together in soapy water, which is an image she might enjoy under other circumstances. And it is one time she supposes Nathan can't _complain_ , and what he doesn't know can't make him cranky. He should be so stretched from this morning that he really _isn't_ going to notice further use.

But right now she sees no sign of William doing anything but nestling into Nathan's body for comfort. He rolls Nathan's head back so it's resting against the curve of his neck, and wraps arms around his chest and middle. William almost lost them both today, but Mara isn't being very welcoming. If making Nathan into his comfort blanket serves as a balm for him, then fine.

Despite her tiredness, Mara _can't_ sleep. It takes her a long, long time of lying staring at nothing with her back to the men, thinking about losing herself, thinking about the risk of waking up as someone else.

William behind her snores and sleeps and then wakes, and she hears scuffling rise to subdued grunts and then quiet sex noises and a careful movement that gently shakes the bed, as William makes good on his plans for Nathan. She doesn't think Nathan wakes up even then, but she isn't really interested. Nathan is _hers_ and she gave him to William, too, and he has the right, especially making up for the lost time of the last few tedious weeks. After a while, the noises go quiet and William's breathing turns back into soft snores.

Inevitably, she can't stay awake forever. The world tunes out, becomes the haze of sleep. They tumble and shift in their unconscious state. She ends up pressed against Nathan's chest. It's growing lighter outside by then, somewhere between four and five in the morning. She has enough consciousness to think, fleetingly, that it was a mistake not to insist William sleep in the centre, or that they sleep in separate beds. But she is not conscious enough to act upon the concern. Nathan rises near enough the surface of consciousness to register her presence and he mumbles and automatically snakes an arm around her which is still trembling faintly.

Audrey Parker wakes some hours later, with the sun streaming through the window to bathe the bed, enfolded in Nathan's arms.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Duke and Jennifer drive to the barrier in the hazy light of another damp morning. After being on stand-by three days, Jennifer is the one who is tired of waiting. She has her book in one hand, and with the other, hugs her jacket around herself as protection against the wind and rain.

" _I open doors, right_?" she'd said to Duke, as they lay together last night. " _Or at least, I opened one before. Maybe opening things is something I do_. _Maybe I can find something that works against that wall_."

Duke agreed they should try. When they woke early and restless, this morning, it seemed like as good a time as any. A time, specifically, when Dwight couldn't come out to 'hrm' at them and disapprove. Jennifer is so desperate to help, some way, any way. Duke isn't going to hold her back.

The wind whips her dress around her legs, and the rain lashes them both as they stand on the grass a little way from the road, at a secluded point in the invisible wall around Haven. Jennifer holds up the book, and flicks through the pages, and _glares_ at the pages. Eventually, she shouts. Her voice is thin but it rises loud and angry against the gale, directing her ire at both book and barrier… and maybe some part at herself. "Damn it! Why don't you do something?! You're supposed to be the contingency! You're supposed to have answers! Where are the answers?!"

Duke can't see the contents of the book either way, but can only assume from her reactions that the pages are still empty. Above their heads, the rain passing through the barrier outlines the goldfish-bowl structure in watery relief. It's an odd kind of beautiful, shimmering with droplets against the darker backdrop of the dingy, cloudy sky. There's even the shimmer of a rainbow trying to form within all the glistening reflections.

That mystical quality to the setting is probably what keeps them both out there and trying for so long. It feels like something is set to happen, something _must_ change. It's in the air, in the whole feel of the world this morning, in this place. Everything seems poised for it. It doesn't seem possible they could leave with nothing having occurred.

But eventually even Duke feels that they have to move, and steps forward to tug on Jennifer's arm. "We need to go. Come on, it's not working. We need to head back. Get out of these damp clothes."

Jennifer's damp clothes squelch as she moves reluctantly with his tug, turning around. And Duke's phone rings in his pocket.

It's Dwight. "The watch I set up on Stranglers' Inlet sighted Mara's boat leaving the island. I guess I can stop feeling bad for sending those guys all the way out there now."

Maybe that's what he's feeling, Duke thinks; this sense that the planets are aligned. He hasn't checked his horoscope this week. Knowing his luck, it outright says 'your evil friends will pay a visit on Thursday'.

"Wait - wait - wait - wait!" Jen yelps, pulling away from his grip, both hands rising to her head. She tips her head back and stares up at the rain-shimmer of the barrier, eyes widening as her neck stretches. "Hello... Was that... did I hear _Albert_?" she calls, mystified, into the sky. "I heard - I thought I heard - Is Albert your name?"

Duke gapes. His girlfriend is talking to air, now. Of all the possibilities he'd considered, in coming here to poke at Mara's barrier, he hadn't anticipated that one.

"Where are you?" Duke's still holding the phone against his ear, and Dwight sounds suspicious.

"Jen wanted to try something," Duke murmurs. "Hang on." He looks askance at Jen, who doesn't respond to him.

"Yes! _I can hear you_!" she hollers up at the barrier, spinning around on the spot. "Talk to me again!"

Duke can't hear _anything_ except Dwight breathing with steadily increasing impatience.

Jennifer trips across the grass and wheels like a shining faery creature, though her clothes are bedraggled from the rain. She's trying to look up and encompass the whole barrier at once. Her voice rises again brightly. "Oh! It's Jennifer. Jennifer Mason! I have a magical book. Are you the barrier?"

Duke puts the phone back to his ear. He doesn't have time for this. He needs to be back in town for _Nathan_. He's the one who rallied the troops. He doesn't want to think about what happens if he's not there to hold people _back_. But he says to Dwight, "Can you give us just ten more minutes?"

* * *

Nathan wakes still vibrating in the aftershocks of the day before. He can't feel, exactly, but with William behind him and Mara in front, there's enough of that faint, borrowed sensation soaking through his body to make him aware of how leaden and sluggish every part of him is.

Burning has been a particular horror to him ever since the volcano world. The only reason he slept is surely because he landed so deeply unconscious that the horror of Mara's last Trouble couldn't intrude his dreams. Returning to consciousness, he braces instinctively to burn anew, and waits for it to happen, tensed against the fire he can't stop. It almost feels contrary to the very nature of things when it doesn't happen. He almost feels cheated.

It was, at a guess, only hours, no more than half a day. But it took over his world so completely, imprinting him with that inevitable repeating cycle. For a long while he lies in the gathering morning sunlight and shudders as he doesn't burn, as expectations continue to be foiled and he almost can't cope with stability... _safety_.

He thinks Mara underestimates the destruction he's capable of now. He _made_ this castle, and that Trouble has a flipside he hasn't fully explored. If Mara had made him feel it, as she so casually threatened, he thinks he'd have taken the whole place down with him.

"Easy, easy there… You're safe now." A low voice murmurs in his ear. Feeling steals over his rigid, trembling body, a bar around his waist, a concentration over his heart where William just flattened his palm. "I wouldn't let you stay like that. I begged her for you. Do you see now how much I love you?"

William never forgets. William is always looking to _win points_. Loving William - which floods back in, slightly dented by the experience in between - can't make Nathan _like_ William. Can't make him comfortable with the other man's body curling against the back of his, inescapably masculine, unquestionably sexual. Even so, today a significant part of him wants to relax into the touch and allow himself to be comforted, allow William to soothe away the lingering shock of Mara's punishment.

"You know, in fact, I'm very generous…" William nuzzles the back of his shoulder, and manages to make the next words sound warmly fond. "Considering your natural reaction to go batshit insane and hit the mass destruction."

Nathan musters a shaky, "Fuck you," managing to level out his breath enough for words. He wasn't exactly in his right mind, and they're both damned lucky it wasn't worse, given the powder keg they've made of him. His body is still trembling and he still keeps his small defiance consciously quiet. Mara's face is buried against the front of his opposite shoulder. Her rage is fresh in his memory.

"Fuck me?" William muses. "Why, of course you may. But let's share a morning kiss, first." He raises a relative amount of cheer for the proposition, though it seems to be cheer that takes effort.

Nathan wonders how to move out of the way or say _no_ in any fashion that will have an impact without waking or incensing Mara. Everything is too stark and he's wide open to the world, stripped by yesterday's dual trials of love and fear. He doesn't know what happens if William tries to take him now - or _even_ the other way around. Meanwhile, a solution isn't presenting itself and William is leaning over him.

A hand slaps over William's descending lips. "Let's take a raincheck on both," says Audrey.

Nathan doesn't have to question it this time - he _knows_ that's Audrey. As she smushes William's nose and mouth with her palm, and shoves him away, she can _be_ nobody else. Out of the terrible rollercoaster of the last twenty-four hours, Nathan's heart rediscovers joy. He's struck with an inability to make any sound. His breath just draws in and he grins and _grins_ at her.

" _Mf_ ," says William, and his eyes boggle as his own realisation comes a moment later. He moves like lightning backwards out of the bed, as Audrey rises up over Nathan like an avenging angel.

William has not forgotten her threats.

"Not her again!" he _whines_ , with his body safely out of reach. "Mara, honeypot, where _are_ you? Come back!"

" _Get out_ ," Audrey says, icily, and William runs, slamming the door behind him. Audrey's breath _whoofs_ out of her and she falls back, slumping in a relief that proves her confidence of a moment before was for show. It's only a second, though, before she's animated and full of purpose again, her hands pulling at Nathan. "Nathan, _Nathan_ , are you okay? Oh my God, I'm so _sorry_!"

"You remember what she did?" he rasps, climbing up on his elbow as her hands slide around his neck, under his chest. Her blonde hair, which Mara chose and kept severe and straight, is _perfect_ on her now, rumpled from bed. " _There_ you are…" Nathan breathes, reaching for that fluffy hair reverently.

She nods. "A little bit. I guess we do have William to thank for _something_ , after all. He really did push Mara to undo it. Then again…" Her face turns absolutely thunderous. "He has no _right_ ," she hisses, and folds him in her arms. Nathan tries to move more upright, to have a more active role in the embrace, but he still feels like he's just the pieces left over after yesterday.

"I knew what I was risking when I went back to them," Nathan says. She's here, she's _whole_ and _real_ in his arms - everything he needs to prove to himself he made the right choice. "It was worth it," he tells her.

"It's too much," she says.

William inside his body cannot possibly be more of a violation than Mara inside her head. He returns her gaze with silent stubbornness, convinced that he's right.

While her eyes are sadly roaming over him, he takes action and runs his hands down from her shoulders to her wrists, kisses her forehead, then her lips, and slides his hands in to circle her waist. "Audrey?"

"Don't get any ideas," she murmurs, her breath hitching, pulling back. Her hands flatten on top of his. "We aren't stopping long enough to get frisky. Not in Mara's - not in _this_ bed. This time we're going _back_."

Nathan finds his libido lacking, anyway, in the aftermath of yesterday. He just wants to hold her because she's her. He grunts and nods, and curls his fingers around her fingers, "To Haven?"

She clutches his hand and starts to scramble for the edge of the bed, dragging him. "Yes, damn it. If I can't get back there and stay as _myself_ , I'll put myself into Dwight's hands and in a jail cell before I turn back into Mara again."

Nathan nods. "We'll figure out a way to help you stay _you_. William's going to make trouble, though."

"Literally," she snorts. "Okay, he's a problem." Her face pinches. "I wish I could just _shoot_ that bastard."

It's a stab in the centre of Nathan's chest no matter how much he wants it not to be. " _No_!"

Audrey looks at him.

"I can't help it," Nathan says, glumly. He feels weak and stupid. It's nothing new that William's physically used him against his will, but this is- He didn't want it, but now, they've managed to almost _make_ him want it. He doesn't want _this_.

" _Fuck_ Mara," Audrey says violently. "We're going to fix you, too, okay?"

He nods and follows her up out of bed. His legs shake under him like he's forgotten how to walk. He hasn't properly walked since Mara first made him burn to ashes. He can almost still _taste_ the ashes. He remembers, dimly, a nightmare of crawling the castle's rooms and corridors, trying to find either one of Mara or William, or _find_ something that could stop the burning, over and over, to do anything - _anything_ \- to make them end that Trouble. Tortuous progress made in seconds-long bursts of lucidity before the cycle began again. He chokes and grabs the bed with both hands to stop his legs from folding.

"Nathan…?"

"I'm okay. Just… yesterday." Audrey is _back_ and he needs to be strong. This is the moment he's worked for. He can get her to the mainland. She remembers _Mara_. She can help Haven. They'll think of a way to fix what Mara and William have done to both of them, and they'll be together again.

Audrey finds some clean clothes for them both and helps him to dress. He doesn't want to take the hand she offers to support him as she jerks her head at the door, but after a hesitation, he does. It's just while he relearns _walking_ again.

Placing a hand rail on either side of the steep steps was one of his better design moves by far. He's got himself under control by the time he reaches the base of the staircase. He successfully totters away from the support under his own steam.

William is sitting like a gargoyle on the few steps up at the corridor leading to the kitchen area. His knees are drawn up, his back hunched, arms twisted around himself, a fierce, unpleasant expression on his face. He's found clothes from somewhere and got dressed, probably to make it harder for Audrey to get at the body parts he values most. William's had too much of both of them. "Where do you think you're going, Nathan?" he asks in a hostile grunt of a voice.

"Back to Haven," Nathan says. "With Audrey."

William asks, " _What about me_?"

He's not making himself very lovable at the moment, but even so, the thought of leaving him raises a pang.

"You have two hands, so use them," Audrey says crisply, her eyes narrow and nose wrinkling. "You can stay here and play at being the embittered villain. Or you can push this now and see who ends up losing patience and killing both of us first."

William ignores her and looks at Nathan. "Don't go."

Nathan gapes for a moment before he feels Audrey's fingernails jab into his skin and clings to her hand again for strength. "She's _real_."

William's laugh is nasty. "She's _Mara_. She was always Mara! Are you really so _stupid?_!" He jerks up onto his feet. It's almost a bounce, but it's far from animated by his usual ebullience. "She's Mara's psychosis! Mara needs _help_. Stop fuelling this - this _thing_."

Audrey ducks around Nathan and punches him in the nose, and then they both reel back, swearing. Nathan grabs Audrey and glares at William.

"What? What? _What_?" the man cries, muffled. His fingers leak a small amount of blood, where he holds them clamped over his face. "How is that my fault?!"

"You're the one who revels in having this ' _connection'_ ," Nathan says. He lifts his fingers cautiously to tap his own face, just in case, but there's no blood there. Audrey lifts her head and spits blood at William's feet, shaking out her hand violently.

"I'm Audrey Parker. Whatever _you_ think." She wipes her hands on her pants, and ignores the further slow trickle from her nose. She takes a step.

"I won't let you deliver Mara to those _ants_ that would defy us!" Abruptly, William's two henchmen are there.

Audrey initially backs off, but then stops them with a frown before Nathan can even call his troops. "You taught me how to command them," she says to William. "Remember? _They don't only listen to you_."

"I didn't _teach you_!" he howls, enraged and frustrated. "I _reminded_ Mara! You're not going to the mainland. You're not taking her from me again! Don't you understand how long I waited?"

"Fine," Nathan rasps, "you don't want to wait, come with us." He holds out his free hand, while Audrey looks at him like he's insane. But they can put William in a cell, too, if he comes with them. Lock him down securely enough and they won't have to worry about him still being out there, and angry, the way they will if they leave him on the island.

William gawps in actual surprise, but quickly grabs Nathan's offered hand and uses it to pull him close, dragging him into a cloying, boa-constrictor embrace, all long limbs seeming to cocoon around him.

Audrey slaps at the coils. "Get _off_. You're not - Nathan, he's not coming!"

But Nathan can't leave him, and practically, _logically_ , he doesn't want to. "It's okay," he tells Audrey.

"Oh, you're too late, Miss Parker," William leers. "He _loves_ me. He'd never leave me. He'll look after me. Won't you, Nathan?" he tags, encouragingly, coming out of the embrace and settling for just one arm slung loosely around Nathan's waist. "We made sure of that."

Nathan can't feel his face screw up but is pretty sure his expression is a doozy. Still, he takes refuge in silence - and instead thinks of the catalogue of things Jordan McKee did and tried to do to him because of _love_. If William thinks that emotionally compromising Nathan makes him _safe_ , then he's mistaken, but it's better to leave William thinking he's been screwed up enough that William can actually count on him. One thing Nathan would _never_ do is pick that bastard over Audrey. He'll tame William by his overconfidence, if that's the opening he's offered. He picks up Audrey's hand again and squeezes it in silent reassurance, trying to deliver the message.

"We need to take Sophie," he says aloud, changing the subject, trying without much success to shrug William off.

"Really, I don't know how I can love someone so _boring_ ," is William's commentary on that concern.

"You're appalling," Audrey says. "People mean nothing to you."

She says worse as she's standing staring at the deflated, limp thing that William made of Sophie. "Change her _back_." Her voice catches in her throat, and she looks at both William and Nathan like she doesn't know either of them.

The glance at Nathan says, _How could you have any affection for the monster who did this_? But since she already knows the answer, Nathan doesn't have anything more to say.

"She's just not in use at the moment," William says breezily. "See?" There's an air hole in the back of Sophie's neck, and William puts his lips to it and starts to blow. The expressions on her face as she's inflated, as her body twists up and starts to expand, are horrible to watch.

Nathan knows William's a monster, but he makes a point to himself of holding this moment in his memory for when he needs something to remind him.

Audrey watches with widened and increasingly angry eyes while Sophie returns to a more human likeness. "I didn't say 'inflate her', I said _change her back_! Take that Trouble off her right now!"

William's eyes spark. He finishes the last breath and pops the cap in place. Sophie falls away from him, sobbing, and Nathan steps forward to catch her and pull her away from William, whose play becomes obvious as he says sulkily, "I don't think I need to do that, Audrey Parker. I think _you_ can do it." His hand rises, offering up his box. "Come on, now. You took the last one from her. Don't tell me you're too afraid to try again?"

" _Bastard_." Audrey looks like she might hit him again. Nathan tries to step in between them, and half manages it, though he's still entangled with Sophie.

"Don't," he murmurs, giving at the shivering woman a sidelong study. She _looks_ normal now, though her fingers are rubbing the air cap on her neck and she's whimpering with the discovery. "It's not dangerous like the other one. We can still take her with us." He can see from Audrey's expression that she is indeed afraid. She isn't alone. Yesterday she changed back into Mara and did more terrible things than ever in Mara's reprisal for being consumed.

"Yes." She nods slowly. "We have to get to Duke and Dwight first. I'm sorry." She grimaces sympathetically at Sophie. "I'll try to take it away later. But this isn't going to hurt you in the meantime. You're back to normal for all functional purposes."

"Aw, such _hesitation_ ," William mocks.

" _Shut up_ ," Nathan growls. "We can always change our minds and tie you to the bed again."

William flashes a leering grin. "I know that's where _you_ want me, Nate. Gee, I hope 'Audrey's' still enough to satisfy you, after what you've had a taste of now. I hope she still wants you after where you've been."

"Of course I do," Audrey says. "You're nothing but a rapist. Stop _blaming_ him."

The word goes through Nathan like a shock, worse than William's taunts. He's angled, fortunately, so that the only one who can see his expression is Sophie. She gives a little gasp and clings to him in a fashion that's subtly different from her own distress, coming out of herself a bit more. He can't feel the comfort she's trying to provide, but maybe it helps a little. She was there for parts that Audrey missed.

This is not going to be the triumphant return he had envisaged - and he had, in his more hopeful moments, envisioned one. Where his persistence allowed him to bring back an Audrey who could help them solve all the Troubles for good, and they returned to Haven with… some kind of fanfare, at _least_ validation. His own absolution for the Barn and more. It would make _right_ all he's done and sacrificed.

When he started out on this journey, he knew and accepted that Mara might kill him, or do terrible things to him. He didn't bargain on becoming her and William's plaything. Never imagined humiliation was the principal terror he was entering into. Though he should have, really - what else _were_ the Troubles, back when Mara and William created them, but their games of toying with human lives?

"It's all right," Nathan mumbles, holding onto Sophie's wrist. _Feeling_ is not much of an anchor anymore anyway. Yesterday Mara and William almost drowned him in it. "We need to go."

He never imagined, either, that bringing Audrey back to Haven would feel like a betrayal in some guilty, conquered part of his mind.

* * *

It's raining as they leave the island: Audrey with Nathan and Sophie, and _William_ far less welcome in tow. The rain falls unhampered onto Nathan's head, through his hair to dribble down his forehead and off the end of his nose. He makes no attempt to shield himself. By contrast, black orbs, hover over William's head in a featureless, shadowy flying manta ray. Audrey does what she can with her jacket and her hands, having surrendered Mara's more voluminous coat to Sophie, but the rain is heavy and persistent and she is cold to the bone.

Nathan takes the oars and William turns his nose up. Audrey reaches to help, but receives a shake of the head. She gets the sense Nathan wants the distraction.

The castle receding is a sight of contradictions. It's Mara's monstrosity, Mara's vanity, the ominous, threatening spiky towers imposed upon the secluded isle. On the other hand, it's Nathan's work, and it's staggering. He breathed life into every stone and spire. And in a way, he made it for her.

Most love tokens are smaller.

"You don't have to go at all." William has spied the direction of her gaze.

"Yes, I do," Audrey refutes sharply. She needs to get Nathan _away_ from them, if she does nothing else.

Even if she doesn't know what Dwight and the Guard will do to her when she returns to them.

There was a time when she thought she could have a life - that there was a way past this all, a way to win. Now, she's sharing a body with a woman who'd subjugate worlds, and it's become about damage limitation. That's all she ever really was, isn't it? A restraining device upon Mara? Her only drive right now can be to hand Mara over to the Guard and free Nathan.

Freedom might be a hard process, not just after what Mara and William have done to him, but _how much_ he's invested in this fight. She hopes Duke will be around to help if she can't.

Because she thinks Nathan still believes in that happy ending, even now. It could only be that which still drives him to push himself so hard. He is a collection of hard angles at the back of the boat, both severe and oddly animated by his ever persistent will as he starts up the motor, now they've picked their way through the rocks of the island shallows. The lines of his body that can't acknowledge pain are screaming, and he avoids looking at William; avoids looking at her while William is there. Sophie is the only one whose eyes he'll meet. Audrey wants so much to give him healing and happiness, but the only route she can realistically think of is to be cruel first. To take herself and all of them _away_.

She doesn't think she can overcome Mara on a permanent basis. That means that while she is with Nathan, so too will Mara be, free to harm him further whenever Audrey falters. Mara grows more vicious with Nathan the more of herself Audrey takes back. The last Trouble was a horror. She can only be thankful he _wasn't_ able to feel it.

She hasn't missed the essence of the basic equation in their current fractious company: Sophie avoids Audrey almost as fervently as she avoids William - the fact she risked so much to lift the woman's more serious Trouble the day before apparently not enough in her favour. She's not clinging to Nathan any more; she just uses him as a buffer, in the sense that she places herself so his body is between her and anyone else. William, _sleaze_ , wants to be close to Nathan, probably more to unnerve her than being genuinely that clingy. Audrey would try to block him but she needs to put herself where she can best watch _everyone else_.

Somewhere inside her, Audrey can feel Mara churning and raging as they strike for the mainland. They're splintering her circle, the things she's collected, the ones that matter. Even Sophie is a valued possession, Audrey realises, more than the castle and the island or any of the material creations on it. People, flesh and blood, can be forged - by which she means _Troubled_ , and revulsion rushes over Audrey again, at the thought of the monster closed inside her.

She cannot live like this. How can Nathan still believe in her, in _them_ , in any hopeful outcome, knowing what lies under the surface? _You're not Mara, you're her jailor,_ Nathan had said to her, and she holds to that. If she's not the fixer of Troubles she always thought she was, at least she has that.

They have to cut south to round the worst of the rocks before they can close in to the shore of Haven. It brings them close enough to the seaward edge of Mara's barrier against the outside world that they can see the rain sparking off it drawing its outline more visibly in the sky. Distantly, she thinks she hears voices, and for a moment, she's bowled over by the beauty of it anyway.

Nathan and Sophie are staring, too. Nathan with his head back and wonder opening up his face which had become so care-stretched and severe in such a brilliant fashion it gives her back her hope for him. William strikes a deliberately bored expression in defiance, sits in the centre of the boat and, well, plays with his balls. He deliberately manipulates the Trouble-creating black spheres in a constant reminder that he's still a threat.

The little boat bobs them to the shore, under an arching rainbow that shimmers and separates into colours spreading out across the arch of the invisible obstruction in the sky.

Nathan and Audrey pull the boat up onto the shore. It's not the private jetty William used before, since Dwight now knows of that, but a more isolated stretch of the town's coastline, a five minute walk away from homes. "Get out," Nathan has to say curtly to William, who lounges in the back of the boat, adding to their burden.

"Or we'll push you back out to drift," Audrey adds, slopping through water to seize the oars.

Nathan already has the engine keys clutched in his hand, but that gets his attention the wrong way. "Audrey..."

"I'm serious," she says dangerously.

"Push him away!" chimes Sophie, won over at last.

"William, _William_ , get off, _now_ ," Nathan snaps, lunging deeper into the water, too, to grab William's wrist and physically pull him off the boat. Audrey _hates_ that Nathan touches him so readily. William just pulls a face as his ankles land in water.

With Nathan no longer a safe harbour to cling to, and with Haven in sight, Sophie opts to start running up the shore.

"Your Trouble-!" Audrey shouts, then gives up. "Fine! Call Haven PD if you... start to deflate, or anything."

William snickers.

"You can _shut up_. That's not funny. That was an awful thing to do to a person." She can't help but notice as she rages at him that Nathan hasn't let go yet. Maybe it's for security that he wants to keep a tight hold on William, or maybe he's just telling himself that.

Sophie disappears over the scrubby slope that leads up from the shore, which grows less sandy and rocky and more grassy toward the top. Nathan gazes unhappily after her. "Maybe I should go make sure she's all right."

"I think she'll be ten times more all right away from all of us," Audrey reassures him. "Let her go."

"You know this just means we'll have to find another cook?" William says, a sarcastic drawl. "When _she_ changes back and _we_ drag you back to where you belong, Nathan."

"If you claim to _love_ me," Nathan says, keeping his eyes averted from William and on the slope where Sophie disappeared, "give me the choice and not the caveman courtship." He doesn't look back for William's reaction to his words: just starts to trudge across the sand, then make his way up the slope.

"Love isn't _choice_ , Nathan!" William calls up, wading behind him in loose, sprawling strides. "Surely you know that, if anyone does!"

He smirks at Audrey. She wants to hit him again, but she clenches her fists at her sides instead. "Yours certainly isn't," she says, spitefully. "You had to screw with his head to get him to feel anything for your twisted personality."

She wants her cuffs, then she could cuff him. There's enough rope around on the foreshore, that she could salvage from other boats. She anticipates both men's resistance and shelves the idea, not so easy or final as clicking a pair of cuffs into place. No matter what happens, she isn't intending to let William walk free around Haven for long, but actively restraining him probably has to wait until Dwight is on hand.

Nathan reaches the top of the slope. William hurries to catch up before he disappears out of sight. Audrey increases her pace to follow them both, her heart rate picking up to beat a litany of anxiety.

The rain has slowed and the world seems eerily quiet without its soporific drumming. It's just that post-rainstorm feeling, she tells herself. God knows any instincts she has for danger are scattered all over the place now. Up over the crest of the slope, they find themselves on a little spread-out street backed onto the water, houses of different construction in various states of repair, hardly one of the picturesque parts of the coastline. They have some distance to walk to get into the town proper. Nathan took a roundabout route from the island to cut down on their chances of being seen from the shore. They intend to hand themselves over to Dwight either way, but they'd rather turn up on HPD's doorstep to do it, and not have to deal with the Guard in between.

The mixed scents of fish and salt and wet foliage sink into Audrey's senses. Being alive and having a body, she thinks, is such a boon, in all sorts of tiny ways she never knew or appreciated. She moves to fall in at Nathan's side, glancing back over her shoulder to check on William, who's fallen behind them.

It might make her happier to lose him in town, except for what he'd get up to.

Nathan sees her looking and frowns.

"I don't trust him," she tells him, barely mouthing the words. "I think he's going to make some kind of move."

"Wherever he is, he'll get up to some form of no good," Nathan replies.

"We call Dwight," Audrey outlines quickly. "Tell him to come and get us. Tell him the situation. Get the jump on William before he can make his own move. As far as William knows, we're going to the police station." She looks up warily, sidelong meeting Nathan's eyes.

He slowly drops his chin in a single nod.

Audrey is feeling short of breath. She's not sure she could speak at a normal volume if she tried. "I'll move on ahead, get myself into one of the houses to find a telephone. Tell William... that I'm scouting, or... _distract_ him if you have to." She doesn't like making that suggestion. Nathan's face twists, receiving it, but he nods again.

Audrey's steps break away from him. Nathan turns back to wait for William. And a car screeches down the road out of nowhere, burning rubber at clearly arrest-worthy speeds, and slews to a halt a short distance in front of them.

Audrey registers firearms, crying out a warning as she dives for cover, hitting a grass bank behind a boat-loaded trailer as bullets _ping_. The car's windows are all down. She can see it from a skewed angle through the underneath of the trailer as its doors open and it dispenses men with dark clothes and heavy boots and - she can _hear_ the guns in their hands even if the angle no longer gives her a line of sight above waist level. She can't see the tattoos either, but she's pretty damn confident placing them as Guard.

Nathan's standing in the middle of the street, unprotected and making no move _to_ protect himself.

...No. As her heart leaps, he just looks toward the ambushers, and their bullets make hard, hollow sounds as they stop on the air around him.

Audrey has never seen the forcefield Trouble truly in action. Not on this scale, not as _herself_. Only in the dim memories of Mara. Seeing it makes Nathan terrifying. Not just the hovering sense of power, the charge that's tactile in the air, but the expression on his face - the way it becomes tight, focused, so very intense he doesn't look like himself any more. Audrey understands on an intellectual level that the forcefield Trouble is very difficult to control. It's perhaps the most dangerously out-of-control Trouble Mara put in him that he still _has_ in him.

...Then the air rushes away from Nathan and flattens the Guard party, knocking them down to a man, and he's all the more daunting.

"Nathan!" She breaks from cover and rushes to join him. Mara knows how close she can get without disrupting his Trouble, and Audrey needs that now, poking free the memories and calculating as she runs.

Something pings past her ear and she feels an impact against her upper arm that shoves her off-balance, almost tripping her running steps. She looks down and is surprised to see the hole in her arm. The pain hits a moment later.

"Audrey-!"

"They're all around us!" The Guard are groaning, struggling, some of them reaching to recover their weapons, starting to move to get up, but this didn't come from them. That shot sounded more like a police issue pistol than the sorts of weapons favoured by the Guard.

"Fall back to William!" Nathan yells, his face taut with strain, as light refraction on the air illuminates his struggles to encase her in his forcefield. He's already trying to cover a field of about 270 degrees in front of him, leaving open the shoreline and a retreat the way they came. Audrey's presence so close is poison to his gift. She doesn't have the breath to speak past the pain. She somehow makes her legs move into a stumbling run, trying to fall back, as instructed, for both Nathan's sake and her own.

Something is spiralling inside her head.

William is clutching his own shoulder, looking angry, and the box is on his shaking palm, black spheres bursting out of it in a cloud.

Another car screeches down the street. It's followed by Duke's truck, but the truck is still a white speck in the distance while the new arrivals from the Guard are disembarking _now_.

William's henchmen swirl into existence and Audrey is more pleased to see them than she had ever thought she could be. She reaches William's side. Nathan, alone in front of them, looks _so exposed_ , even though she knows that he isn't.

Her head reels. She clutches her shoulder harder and looks around for a weapon. She wishes she had a gun, but there are only stray black spheres zinging in the air. Several of them meander toward her, enticing her to take them and use them. They sidle into her pockets. But they aren't _her_ weapons...

William is looking at her intently.

His men step out, placing their bodies before both Audrey and William like human- _inhuman_ -shields. "He's seen off worse than this before," William says, talking about Nathan.

Chains whip out of nowhere to seize and bind Nathan, appearing _within_ the confines of his forcefield. He falls as they wrap around his body and drag his arms tight to his sides and his legs together. A Trouble, and Audrey immediately picks out one of the Guard who's lying on the ground but watching Nathan with anticipation. She doesn't know what made her look at him, in _particular_...

No. That's not true.

It's like she can feel it _emanating from him_. She remembers this Trouble, remembers creating it... She remembers enough to know that it won't work. Chains can't hold Nathan for long-

She _revels_ in it as he bursts free, forcefields splintering the chains from within, and she's so _proud_ of the power he wields in her name. Her very effective underling, even as treacherous as he is-

" _Kill them all, Nathan!"_ Mara raises her head and screams.

But Nathan stumbles in the act of getting up, and looks back, stricken.

* * *

By the time Duke arrives, it's a raging battle, and he's damned glad Jennifer wanted to be dropped off at the hospital. He's still not sure what's going on with her, but talking to invisible voices out of the air has to be better than being caught up in _this_.

He almost falls out of the door of his truck. He can see Nathan, who's furious and frenetic, fighting against chains that try to pin his arms, his legs, wrap around his throat. Each time the chains seem to have a hold, they burst away. Nathan shouts at the Guard, all raw fury- " _You have no idea what you've done!_ "

The sight of him turns Duke cold. He doesn't look in control. He doesn't look _sane_. Was Duke wrong, three mornings ago on the island, when he thought there was enough of Nathan left to save? Or have things changed so much since then that they're past the point of no return now?

Mara and William hang back, too far away for Duke to see their expressions. Those two guys slouch, glaring, in front of their masters, further blocking the view - shifting unconcernedly as bullets hit them. Although Duke can't get a good look at William and Mara, he thinks he can see blood on them both.

Mara extends a hand and points a finger, and Duke hears a crack that he thinks is her voice, commanding, buried beneath all the other sounds on the air. The smaller of the two guys breaks up into his constituent goo-balls and the spheres form into spears that fly at one of the Guard like some fucked up cross between arrows and birds. They fly in a small flock and one pierces the man's throat, sending him into a gurgling, bloody sprawl. The chains cease to hamper Nathan.

Duke gulps. Mara and William, he's noticed, aren't big on the expenditure of unnecessary effort. Past pattern is they shove Nathan between themselves and any threat and leave him to deal with it. Duke's not quite sure how to take it that he just saw Mara leave herself open to help Nathan out.

Vince is in the car that arrived ahead of Duke, easing out of it behind the shield of his open door. Duke casts a frown and an angry, insistent gesture Vince's way, and the old man raises his voice: "Remember, we want Wuornos alive! We'll-" Mara's form catches his stare and his old voice goes slow and sad, but gains a weighty conviction. Vince was there to witness Mara's acts right after she first came back to Haven. Vince, like Duke, doesn't need any extra convincing that Audrey - Sarah - Lucy... _all_ of Haven's saviours are long gone. "We'll take the other two as they come."

Mara isn't going to remove the Troubles she made, but Nathan can still try to fix them. That's how Dwight sold it to everyone.

" _Stop!_ " yells Nathan. He's out of breath, choking, deflecting automatic gunfire like some kind of freakin' superhero movie, but he raises his hands like he's surrendering. "You can't kill them! ... _Audrey's still in there_! She can come back! _Audrey's still there!_ "

Nathan has _always_ spouted that.

Vince shakes his head.

Mara and William try to fall back. If they can make it to the shore, back to their boat... Would they leave Nathan? That would make things _easier_...

"Nathan, _come_ ," Mara orders, sounding strained. "Despatch them quickly. We need to go home!"

There's something changed in her from the cruel, confident woman Duke saw three days ago. She holds herself differently. There's a new edge to her voice as though, in the meantime, somebody taught her fear.

"Audrey!" Nathan yells back at her, and most confusing of all, "I need you back!" There's a _conviction_ in the way he says it, as if he's waiting for Audrey to appear in a flash of light, accompanied by a divine choir or something. As if he _expects_ it, as if it could happen, and that's crazy.

"No, Nathan." And Mara's response sounds harsh, but harried. Last time the Guard and Haven PD came out to challenge her, Duke saw her laugh amid the violence. He doesn't think it's the ambush that's responsible for the undercurrent of distress in her now. "We are going home. You _will_ go back. End this skirmish!" She still says that last like the fight is only a pesky diversion, some game Nathan's got too involved in that she can't drag him away from.

Duke has a bad feeling about all of this.

One of the other Guard, who came with Vince, inches forward of the car to get a better field of view. Duke sees his hand move.

 _Things_ start falling from the sky. Another Trouble, and _seriously_? It's like it's just producing any random shit... Oh, look, there's a pony. Duke gawps at it. A freakin' _jeep_ appears, making everyone nearby swear and run for cover. It bounces off Nathan's forcefield and slides, metal groaning, to the ground. It rolls and smashes upside-down onto the hood of the Guard car that was first to arrive and is left stranded in the middle of all this, trashed from the battle even before the jeep landed on top of it.

"Holy _fuck_!" Duke howls to Vince. "What the hell made you decide to drop stuff on a guy who has a fucking forcefield against physical attack?!"

Vince gives him a quelling look that says, _Wait_. Duke's thoughts disappear into curses. But Nathan's looking panicked... Increasingly so as the attacks edge behind him, toward William and Mara.

The Troubled man is sweating too. Mara's birds resolved back into the little henchman, but Duke wonders if they'll reappear.

Nathan starts moving suddenly, and Duke squints, searching for why. Wait, what are those-? _Bricks_ , he thinks, and oh, oh _crap_... Bricks are materialising on the air above William and Mara. They both start running, too, but not towards Nathan, away from him, back to the shore. It's the wrong choice, Duke thinks, disbelieving, because whatever the Guard are trying to drop on them now is _enormous_. It's not a house... With more of it appearing he recognises, dry-mouthed an old factory complex from three miles or so down the coast. Teleported mid-air, with no support to stand on, it's collapsing even as it materialises. Bricks rain down the convex edges of Nathan's forcefield, and Nathan has begun flinching with the impacts. The thing's so freakin' _big_. Is it too much for his forcefields to cope with?

"Is this seriously supposed to _take him alive_?" Duke yells at Vince, who's gone bug-eyed and stock-still, watching.

The man the Trouble belongs to collapses, tremors going through his body like he's caught in some kind of fit. Apparently it's too much for _him_.

Nathan's still trying to run. An avalanche of bricks are falling from the sky and he's put himself right under the centre of it, now, in his bid to get close enough to protect William and Mara. The partial levitating building shatters completely as the Troubled man falls. Some of it disappears with the cut-off of the Trouble trying to materialise its enormous structure. The rest falls all at once in a final cascade.

Nathan makes it in time to deflect the bulk of what's left from William and Mara, shaping the forcefield he can't wrap around them into a steep slope to catch and siphon the material away instead. Some bricks get through despite his efforts. More get through as Nathan's forcefield collapses and he disappears beneath the avalanche.

"No!" Duke howls. He starts moving towards them, which is just _stupid_ while the bricks are still falling. While Mara and William are still there, knocked flat but _clearly_ having escaped the worst of it. "Nathan!" He thinks... he _thinks_ that looked survivable. Nathan just caught the last edge of it.

He's proved right as Nathan rises up, coated with dust and blood. Their eyes fix on each other and Nathan's widen in an _oh shit_ moment clear as day before another forcefield spins out and knocks everything flat.

The ground slams Duke in the face, and he groans. He wonders if he heard ribs go or if those cracking noises were just splintering bricks. He thinks Nathan didn't mean to catch him in that; Nathan was already hurling the attack out before they set eyes upon each other. The bricks that had begun to settle are smashing outward in a spray and Duke lets out an unmanly whimper as he clutches hands over his head and hunkers down, stumbling to his knees. He escapes being hit, but hears cries of pain from elsewhere, hears bricks impacting cars and trees and, further back, buildings, smashing glass. "Fuck! Oh, _fuck_!" he shrieks into his hands. " _How_ was this a good idea?!"

 _How_ was this _his_ idea? He must have been out of his mind.

"Duke?!" Nathan's voice wavers across the devastation... He's finished. _Shit_ , Duke thinks, _it's finished_. He uncovers his head in time to enjoy about one second of Nathan's concern before that concern springs away to Mara and William, who are picking themselves out of the debris behind Nathan.

And, oh, they're _fine_. They're _moving_ , and there's almost nothing else in this field of devastation that is.

"Vince... Oh, fuck, _Vince_..." Duke looks back to the car, looking for the old man, and can't see him, but - damn it, Nathan's right here! Within a sprint of him! He's _bleeding_. Isn't this what Duke came for? Surely, _surely_ , the forcefield Trouble is through now, after all of this?

Duke starts scrambling, staggering through the wreckage. And maybe if he'd been alone, he'd have made it, Nathan wouldn't have pulled out the big guns. But there are other noises now as the remnant of the Guard and the police are starting to pick themselves out of the rubble. Another man stands up and, oh, oh, _fuckshitdamnitall_ , Duke _knows_ what his Trouble is...

Duke starts to yell as his feet quicken: "Don't - don't - _don't_!"

All the breath gets knocked out of him as he bounces off the forcefield.

For a moment, he's just so relieved, so _fucking relieved_ , that the forcefield Trouble still works... Then the world turns red and he's howling and swearing and knows he needs to be _away_ , _far away_ from Nathan, right now.

Fire. Owen Ferris makes fire.

If the Guard bothered to tell Ferris that they want Nathan to come out alive and, at worst, only medium rare, it doesn't particularly look as though Ferris listened.

But though Nathan flinches from the oncoming fire, it bursts on his forcefield and gets deflected like everything else. Duke's trying to burrow into a hollow in a heap of fallen bricks. _Make_ himself a hollow to burrow into. He's got far too good a view of proceedings from his vantage point, and he can see that Nathan's skin hasn't reddened, his hair hasn't burned. If anything, his hair looks better than when Duke last saw it.

The thing is, Nathan doesn't get up to retaliate. He stays curled over, fallen on his hands and knees within a contracted forcefield, his limbs rigid and his mouth stretched in an expression Duke's not sure how to read. His forcefield held. He's untouched by the fire. Duke... doesn't understand.

" _Nathan_!" Mara yells, full of concern and fury and her own fire... and a panic Duke is also not sure how to read. "Nathan _, get up_! You are in Haven. You are _fine_!"

Of course, Duke realises, dazed. Nathan came back from the void with _burns_. They don't know what happened there, but everyone who's seen him knows _that_ much.

Mara looks shocked and shattered, and then, stunning Duke, she starts to run, with William on her heels. Nathan's forcefield is cinched in tight around his form; it's not _big enough_ to cover her any more. She's injured and so is William. Their two thugs grunt, set their expressions grimmer, and forge in front of them. The Guard and HPD officers who are getting up to shoot at Mara - well, the thugs can move like lightning. After the first two go down the rest are wheeling away in panic and Duke is trying to make himself look very, very unthreatening.

And in the midst of all this, there's still Owen Ferris' Trouble. This time he aims it blithely over Nathan's head, unconcerned about Nathan at all, now, with bigger things in his sights. Mara opens her mouth to start a scream or shout. William beats her to it... and the thugs explode in the instant of his cry, their constituent goo-balls surging in front of Mara and William to form a black wall just in time to block the fire. Mara turns her cry into a scream for Nathan that's at least half of it rage and indignation. Duke's noticed that _does_ seem to be her song.

He watches Nathan snap out of it, shaking his head and wedging a knee under himself to stand. He looks like he's just woken up and is still half in a daze. The forcefield flickers and dies as he staggers.

It hits Duke that this is what he was waiting for. Mara and William are cut off. The henchmen... the goo-balls... are busy being the wall responsible for that, as hellishly unnerving as that black, hanging shape is, and the guy with the fire is still on hand to make them observe it. Duke frantically gestures to Ferris, mouthing, _leave Nathan for me_.

He runs across the rubble. "Nathan...?!"

Dazed eyes look up and meet his. The plan was to beat the crap out of Nathan, no holds barred, using his own blood to do it, then run what's left of him to Dwight.

It's made _ridiculous_ by the moment. Nathan's eyes lighten with the sight of Duke, and Duke sees his own name on Nathan's lips as he straightens and takes a step. Duke could lead him away from Mara right now just by taking his hand...

Duke's just reaching out to take that hand...

The single shot that drops Nathan catches them both completely by surprise.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Dust still floats in the air, along with those balls of black goo William uses; spiralling like angry bees, most of them resolving into the henchmen again as William and Mara move. The thick smell of Troubled blood excites Duke more than he ever wants anyone to know, though _he'd_ like to know how the fuck his sinuses can tell it's Troubled. He pushes it down fiercely and buries it beneath all the other things he's feeling right now. There are cries from injured people all around. It's terrible, what's been done here, and terrible to have been its instigator. Although Nathan is within a few feet of him, somehow Mara and William manage to reach Nathan's fallen body before Duke does.

All along there was the possibility that someone was going to take things into their own hands. Duke supposes that to most of those watching, Nathan just decimated their people single-handed. Maybe it seemed imperative to put a bullet in him rather than leave things to Duke.

" _If he dies_ ," Mara says, " _I will destroy this town and everyone in it_."

Even William seems to give a damn, though he's canny enough to recall those henchmen from taking Mara's revenge upon the Guard, to stand between himself and Mara and more bullets.

"Stand down!" Some part of Duke notices Vince emerging from rubble, and thinks, _oh, thank fuck_. After losing track of the old bastard in the fight, Duke doesn't know if he was buried, but he's picking his way through the carnage now like a grizzled, grey lion, coated all over by cement dust and blood. His eyes are wide with shock, but all the same Duke wonders if he _knew_ the Guard planned to dump a building on top of Mara. He's glad, though, in what dim part of his attention isn't pinned on Nathan, and William and Mara, that there's someone here to take _charge_ of this fucking disaster.

"I - I've called 911," Vince wheezes. He's short of breath and struggling, but the wonder is he's still alive.

Duke wonders if there are any cops left alive or conscious within all this. (He wonders how many are _dead_.)

Mara's face goes tight. Nathan's breath rattles and threatens to stop. Duke makes himself remember the plan. Or... the plan _modified_.

Because he'd never have anticipated Mara loving Nathan enough to let Duke deliver him from her arms to Dwight. As far as he was able to tell all along, Mara thought of Nathan like a prized hound. He would never have counted upon her being willing to surrender him to save his life.

* * *

After Duke departs with Nathan, his form a blur under the influence of Nathan's seven-times-troubled blood, the stillness of everyone remaining hangs on the air.

It cannot last.

Mara breaks it. They _dare_ attack her? They will _pay_. She gave Nathan to Duke to save him, but beyond _doubt_ she intends to reclaim him later. She sneers at the remainder of Haven's pathetic army as she stands, Nathan's blood on her clothes and hands. Let it serve as her warpaint for the finish of this fight. She will show them! "Come on!" she yells. "We do not have all day! Let me see you _fight_!" She splinters one of William's creations to bring back her birds, and they hover, black wings beating the air around her. Perhaps she looks like the personification of death itself to these fools, for none of them move.

"M-my God..." stutters Vince, who is seeing the reality behind each of the imposed personalities his bumbling affections patronised over the years.

"Yes, Vince," she hisses. "Love from Sarah, and Lucy, and _Audrey_."

It feels like there's danger in saying that name, but she won't back off from it, and the moment passes.

Someone dares to shoot and a bird intercepts the bullet. It's knocked sideways in the air by the momentum but doesn't fall.

She promised to kill everyone here if Nathan died. Duke took Nathan and he is on his way to where Dwight can help him even if his breath expires before they arrive. Now with every passing second Mara's anxiety moves further toward _rage_. That these lesser beings had the audacity to band together to take them down! She thinks that she might just kill them all anyway.

Vince, who is near enough to see it and wise enough under the bumbling mask he wears to understand it, stumbles backwards, mouth opening to call a warning, but never getting that far.

"Oh, don't run!" Mara calls, letting her voice shift into mockery, riding over him. "Stay, and let me kill you! You always wanted, didn't you, to give me what I _want_?!"

"Mara." William's voice, tense and fearful, tugs at her from behind. It might not be the first time he's spoken. William was not made for extended battle. He prefers situations where he can manipulate and cajole, as that is where his true talents lie.

The Guard dropped a _building_ on her, and she is still standing. She spins around to make sure she addresses them all - all the worms that still live. "You think you can use _my_ _Troubles_ against me, my Troubles that I made? I will _kill every last one of you_!"

" _Mara_ ," William says again, desperately. "We need to go! Duke has Nathan! We need to go to Dwight." He is becoming tedious in his insistence to spoil her fun. "Mara, _they think they can keep him_."

That gets through to her. Is it possible they were so canny as to have planned this to part them? Nathan is hers and no-one else shall take him. But how does William propose they are going to get out of here, she scoffs at him, if not through fighting?

William tells her, _I have been working on that_.

The Guard are afraid of her now, them and whatever of Haven's police are left hiding in the sidelines, where her threats sent them scampering. But there's still danger in the moments when William is reshaping the aether into a new form, when they are left unprotected.

The henchman and the birds become one large bird, soot-black, taloned and with a beak like a saw. William climbs up onto its back, his movements imbued with urgency. "Come on!" Mara throws herself after him, catching his hand. Before she can completely seat herself, the bird is in flight.

It's hard to stay on. There are good reasons they had not considered this as a transport solution before. Utilising any animal as a steed is a skill of its own, and adding flight into the equation... it's just not _dignified_. It's certainly not comfortable.

Bullets pop on the air around them. Mara clings tight to their unsteady perch, tries to ignore the pain in her arm and the greater one in her heart, and laughs at the futile attempts to shoot her. Most of them ran too far on their chicken legs, when she set William's men on them in reprisal for Nathan, and all of them are shooting too wildly to have a hope of hitting anything from that distance.

Then again, there's the curse of dumb luck. Somehow, a wild bullet connects, grazing the back of William's wrist as Mara is clinging on, mostly one-handed, her position more precarious in that moment as they're wheeling around to search for Nathan.

William cries out as the shot connects, but it's Mara whose grip is made painful and slippery with blood, Mara who falls.

She falls backwards, arms stretching out like wings as she tries desperately to find purchase. William and the bird move, reaching for her, but are already far too far away to connect.

She stares up at William and his black bird, receding in grey-white sky, air whipping past her as she falls. Abruptly, branches interrupt her view and he is lost from sight.

* * *

"Oh my God." Duke staggers as he finally lets the blood-rush subside, unburdening himself of Nathan's still bleeding form on the cabin's bed. "That - that was _not normal_ , even for me. I suppose a half dozen extra Troubles make all the difference."

"Is he alive?" Duke's vaguely aware of Dwight asking, moving past him to put hands on Nathan, while he collapses on hands and knees on the floor. Having pushed his body to run like The Flash under the influence of the Crocker Legacy, now he's paying for it and then some. He whoops for breath.

"...Didn't think that made a difference."

Dwight turns and pulls a face that tells him that it makes a difference to _Dwight_ , even if it might not to the heal-ee.

"Okay. Sorry." Duke doesn't know if Nathan right now is alive or dead. Would his Trouble interpret it as a killing and absorb Nathan's curses, if he died in Duke's arms? He shudders as he watches Dwight put fingers to Nathan's neck, searching for a pulse. Clothing is pulled aside to expose Nathan's chest. Old burn scars, old bullet scars, new bullet hole. Duke can't help but notice that the burn scars are crazy improved from when he last saw them - almost invisible, now.

"Someone got overzealous," Dwight observes.

Duke nods at the floor. "Doesn't someone always? Is he alive?"

Nathan makes a soft sound and jerks in the bed. Dwight bows over him with an oddly tender, "shh", and his hands move on Nathan's chest.

The sounds after that are less pleasant and less tender. Duke hunches over on his knees and pretends he's not listening to Dwight in agony. This sucks, and it's Mara's fault, and he just left a bunch of the Guard and probably several of Dwight's officers with Mara and William both, and who knows what hell is being unleashed back there now?

"That... that was _chaos_." He waits until Dwight's noises have subsided into shaky but levelling breathing, and underneath it, Nathan's breaths are drawing steady and regular again. His own breath is starting to level too, so he peels himself up and lurches over to hook his ass on the end of the bed. "That was fucking _insane_. Did you know they were going to drop a building on him?"

Dwight blinks at him. "Which building?"

"Oh, fuck you," Duke grunts. He wonders what kind of reports Dwight has received back from the battle. There's phone reception here, a little bit. "No kill like overkill, huh? Fuck you and fuck the Guard."

He lets his mouth run because, _God_. Nathan's there on the bed, and his eyes are still shut, but they need to _deal_ with this. Duke has no idea how he's going to react to being forcibly separated from Mara once he comes back to himself. "Shit... Back there, I saw him... He cracked chains like they were nothing. I think it was that forcefield thing again, like he imploded the metal from within..."

 _How_ are they going to keep him?

Dwight gives Nathan's sprawled body a slightly wild-eyed assessing look. "I can find something to put him out. Depends what our goals are here. Do we want to keep him and see what separating them does? Or do we want to talk to him?"

The idea of drugging Nathan, after all the other mind-altering and self-compromising crap he's been subjected to by Mara already, repulses Duke. "I want to talk to him, Dwight!" he yelps, and Dwight returns a defensive, judging sort of glance that says Duke also has to face facts that having him conscious enough to talk gives him a good chance of getting out.

"Let's first get him secured, before he starts to wake up," Dwight says. "Ropes are a lot closer to the skin. Make them tight and they're closer still. Probably harder to use that trick without risking damage."

While Dwight's pushing Nathan's upper body sideways on the bed to tie his wrists behind him, and tie his wrists to his waist for good measure, Duke pulls the boots from his feet and ties more ropes around Nathan's ankles, then his knees. He doesn't feel good about it, though. Hell, it seems to him they're just increasing the chances that Nathan wakes up swinging.

"Maybe if his arms are behind him it'll make it harder to use that trick he pulled with the chains, too," Duke says, "because he can't feel it, so if he can't _see_ it- Oh, _fuck_. Fuck." He wishes he could _un_ -say that, but Dwight's not stupid. Knowing how to make Nathan helpless makes Duke feel fucking awful. But he can't take the thought back, so he tears a strip from the corner of the bed sheet, and folds it over and over until he has a single thick, long strip that's surely impossible to even see light through. Then he wraps it around Nathan's eyes, and ties it at the back of his head.

Dwight grimaces and his breath whistles through his teeth, but he gives Duke a nod. They both pick up Nathan and shift him to the wooden chair in the centre of the room. They use more rope to tie him to the chair as well.

When they're done, Duke touches Nathan's face. He doesn't flinch, of course. "Nathan. Nathan?!" He's vocalised a few soft sounds through the process of moving him. Duke's pretty sure he's nearing consciousness, but it's never been easy to wake him up when he can't feel any signals from his body. After a few more repeats of his name, he goes very still under Duke's hand and Duke wishes he could see his eyes, but is pretty sure Nathan's awake.

A moment later, he confirms with a sluggish, "Where am I?"

"Never did have any imagination, did you?" Duke asks gently.

Nathan sucks air. "Duke." His voice has the edge of panic. "Why can't I see? Damn it, don't _screw around_ , what happened? Where the hell is this? I can't hear-"

The battle, the sea, the traffic and town noises, _Mara shouting at him_ , Duke fills in. And of course, Nathan's next question, before he can even attempt to answer any of the first batch, is: "Where's Mara?" He gives a little hesitation right before her name, as if he wants to say another one.

"We're safe," Dwight says, his voice a low, reassuring rumble. "Duke brought you to me. I healed you." He adds, after a moment's sour consideration, "Again." After further consideration, "We restrained you for our own safety."

The moment Nathan gets that that's the reason why he can't move, he starts wrenching at the restraints; probably damaging himself more than the ropes in the sharp violence of his movements.

"Hey! Hey, hey, _stop_!" Duke yelps. "Whoa, Nathan! Buddy, I'm sorry, but we got you _out_ , it was not easy, and you are _not_ running straight back to Mara now we've finally got you here. And no, I am not real down with the bondage, either, but since you just totalled the most fucked up shit the Guard could throw at you, I'm not watching you walk straight back out of here. You're safe here with us, I swear it. Dwight's not going to hurt you, you _know_ I'm not going to hurt you. Fucking _listen_. We got you out! Chill." It's a mournful fact that Nathan can't feel the comforting hands Duke tries to lay on his shoulders.

"You're an _idiot_ ," Nathan spits, but a moment later, stops thrashing. "I have to get back to her. You don't understand."

"No. _You_ need to understand that you _don't_ have to go!" Duke throws back at him. "You _don't have to_ , Nate. I know she's screwed with your head. You need to get this sorted out, time-out to stop and think. Get your own choices back."

"You'll do that by..." Nathan shuffles, scuffles, moves the chair a fraction across the floorboards with a short whine of polished wood on wood "...tying me up and _making_ me?" He laughs bitterly.

Dwight says, an odd flatness in his voice, "You just fought the Guard in an all-out battle to protect that bitch. How far are you going to go for her, Nathan? How many of them - of _my people_ \- did you kill?"

Nathan goes very still. The air seems to fill with charge, and it's impossible not to remember, looking at Nathan's face, that they were _his_ people, too. "I tried not to."

He used the forcefields. Duke _knows_ he has other shit in there, nasty shit like the shadow policemen that didn't make an appearance in the battle. Always when Duke's seen him fight for Mara, it's been with the forcefields. Which are, granted, scary as fuck to witness in action, especially when he flattens everything in sight. But they're still _defensive_. Mostly defensive.

"Where are we?" Nathan asks again in the silence, sounding annoyed.

"Somewhere we won't be disturbed," Duke tells him. They came here to this old cabin Dwight knew about - and it was Garland's, so it's a sure bet Nathan would know it, too, if his eyes weren't covered - in the hope that Mara won't be able to find him here.

"I can't hear the traffic sounds," Nathan says. "Can't hear any people. Town noises."

"No," Duke agrees.

"Can hear _birds_."

Duke can't fucking hear birds. Most of what he hears right now is his own stressed-out heart pumping. The soothing sounds of nature outside the cabin's wooden walls do not get a look in. It makes him wonder how _Nathan_ , who was far more in the middle of the action, can possibly be calm enough to notice the sounds of the birds. Or maybe Nathan's been running on high-intensity for so many weeks now that it's all kind of levelled as _normal_ for him now. Nathan's probably guessed where they are, but who the hell cares, so long as he can't tell Mara.

"You have to let me go." Impatience strains his attempt at a reasonable tone. "Audrey's still there in Mara. We were _coming_ to you, but she changed back when the Guard attacked."

Duke stares. He's known Nathan to spin a tale or two over the years, but there's an anxious earnestness in his voice that makes Duke uneasy. _Could_ it be true? He and Dwight exchange glances and Dwight shakes his head minimally, warning Duke off going down that route.

"I've never seen any sign of Audrey inside Mara," Duke says. "I know what they're doing to you, Nathan..." He chokes, and he didn't, _doesn't_ want to spell it out or risk hinting too much in front of Dwight, but- "Audrey would never allow that."

"That's what I thought," Nathan says, his voice pitching a bit high, almost sounding trippy. But it twists gradually to anguish as he carries on: "But then she came _back_. She came _back_ , Duke! Where is she? What happened to Mara after I passed out? If you left her back there... Please, _please_ , you have to stop them... You can't let them kill her."

Duke and Dwight engage in a word-free exchange of heated hand gestures. Nathan's crazy, Dwight thinks, rotating a finger at the side of his head. He'd say all that anyway. Needs to believe Audrey's still there and he can save her because it's the only thing still keeping him going.

Duke _is not sure_. He knows Nathan, and he knows when he's telling the truth and when he's lying, especially to himself - to an extent, Duke knows - and this desperation has a ring of conviction about it that he did not expect.

Dwight thinks _Duke's_ fucking crazy for being ready to jump on board this train again.

But it's Audrey, it's _Audrey_ , and _something_ is keeping Nathan going when he should have burned out long ago. What if it _is_ this? Duke loved Audrey, too, and doesn't she deserve a chance? One last chance, as much chance as he's prepared to give Nathan?

"I can't go there," Dwight says with exasperation, finally ending the silent back-and-forth. "Too much chance of bullets still flying. Look - if you have to, you can take the truck and go check it out for yourself."

Duke's not in love with the idea of stranding Dwight here without an escape. The top sheet on the bed is speckled with patches of Nathan's blood from before. Duke picks it up and scrunches a stain in his fist. Enough seeps out to feel the _rush_ again. It's so good that his legs feel weak. He sets his teeth against a moan that might be too obviously pleasure, and since the sheet is already torn, tears it again to take off the worst soaked corner.

"We're really going to do this?" Duke checks hesitantly. "Trusting him. Trying to take Mara alive, after everything... Even when it means keeping _William_ alive, too."

"You're the one who's thinking of doing it," Dwight responds. "Don't ask me."

He's making it clear that it's Duke's choice and responsibility, damn him. Normally, Duke hates people making his decisions, but he'd give a lot to have someone else make this one.

He casts a betrayed glance back at the big guy for setting this on him, and jerks his shoulders convulsively, _uncomfortably,_ as he steps outside the cabin. He squeezes more of Nathan's blood from the sheet, and starts running.

* * *

Nathan wakes up in limbo, or at least he _thinks_ he wakes up, because he's blinded, paralysed, and like that, with almost no senses to rely on, it's more like being trapped in one of his recurring nightmares, where his senses fall away one by one. The forcefields want to roll out from him like waves, but he holds back, _holds back,_ because he doesn't know what's out there that he'd flatten and destroy.

He makes himself wait, only to discover it's _Duke_ who's done this to him.

Nathan wants Duke for an ally. Duke, of all people, has to believe in him. Duke who knew and loved Audrey as well... _almost_ as well. His rage and frustrations probably hamper his attempt at explanations, but then Duke leaves; he _believes_ Nathan enough to go help Audrey, and Nathan is almost overcome with the relief.

Nathan is also left with Dwight in the... _cabin_ : he's fairly sure they're in a cabin. It could even be _the_ cabin, because it smells like Garland's, but like this he can't be sure of much. He wonders if Dwight's aware that Mara knows about the cabin, that Audrey has _been here_.

Dwight's footsteps circle around him, not quite completing a circuit, but reaching a point and then stopping, tracking back the other way. They're faintly apologetic, or at least, hesitant with _something_ that isn't fear. Nathan's not sure he can trust that impression. As far as HPD is concerned, he's surely public enemy number one by now. He even suspects that Dwight was willing to encourage Duke to go because Dwight wants an uninterrupted crack at Nathan. He doesn't buy into the claims about Audrey, but has _no_ objection to losing Duke's interference for a while.

All the same, Nathan strongly gets the sense that Dwight is kind of _embarrassed_ to have him here like this, in this position. They've worked together a while, after all. He was almost Dwight's boss. Then Dwight was almost _his_ boss.

The silence stretches. Nathan isn't tempted to break it - blindfold and tied to a chair is not his favoured setting for conversation.

"How many Troubles do you have?" Dwight asks.

"Is this an interrogation?" Nathan asks. His voice rasps.

"Call it that if you want." There's a shrug in Dwight's voice. His footsteps retreat and his voice grows duller toned, as if he's facing away. There's some rustling. "Duke's busy. I'd rather not waste the opportunity to gain information we might need in future."

"You're going to torture me for information?" Nathan says flatly.

Dwight snorts a laugh. His footsteps return. Nathan smells something sweet beneath his nose, and there's a sound of liquid sloshing, as a bottle is deliberately shaken to verify what's in front of him. "I'm going to _ask_ you for information. Drink."

Nathan thinks about it a moment, then says, "Can't." He can't see or feel what he's doing. He's _not_ going to choke or dribble soda, or whatever that is, all over himself in front of Dwight. Particularly not after William fed him, yesterday.

"Yes, you can," Dwight says, with absolutely no patience, and shakes the bottle again.

Nathan sighs and parts his lips. William _fed him_ yesterday. What the hell does it matter any more?

Dwight curses as he receives some demonstration of the reason for Nathan's reluctance, but Nathan tastes cherry cola strongly enough to know at least some of it got in his mouth. He swallows. Dwight says, "More," and they repeat the exercise a few times further.

"Okay, Nathan," Dwight says finally, retreating and putting down the bottle before resuming his pacing. "Come on... You tell me you don't want to hurt anyone, that you're with Mara as some sort of damage limitation, so help us out. What did she do to you? I've seen the forcefields. I've heard about the shadow men. What else?"

Nathan thinks about it, turning his head to follow Dwight. If Mara is in charge again, if they have to go back to the island today, wait for another chance... He can do that, though he feels weary to the bone at the thought of it. Of absorbing more of both of their attentions. But he can survive that, for Audrey. For their next chance.

"If I tell you everything I can," Nathan says slowly, "will you let me go back to them? Will you support what I'm trying to do?"

"I'll think about it," Dwight says flatly, and... to be honest, Nathan _believes_ him, because he makes it sound like it will take such a damned _lot_ of persuasion. He's not stringing Nathan along with false promises. Dwight is not at all amused by the things that he has been doing under Mara's service, but he's not ruling out absolutely any possibility of trusting him as a spy in Mara's camp.

Nathan also thinks that Duke will like the idea far less than Dwight, who is willing to entertain that it's worth enduring what Mara and William will do to him when they get back, for future gain.

He chooses to try to make an ally of Dwight. It's also a relief to just _tell_ some of it. He starts at the beginning. Forcefields, before they even crossed through the gate. The _find_ Trouble, on the other side. Mara's attempt to seize control of him. The _make_ Trouble...

" _That's_ how the castle got there?" Dwight asks with amazement. "I thought William made it with his... blobs. Somehow."

"I made the castle." It's the one thing Mara's done to him that he in any way _likes_. It figures that it's the one that started playing up. "William can't make big things, permanent things, with the blobs. He's only got a limited amount of them."

Dwight grunts as though he's making note of that, too. Nathan carries on, through the ill-considered Trouble in the world where William was captive, that she took back - and that makes Dwight draw in a sharp breath. "Yeah, she can do that. Audrey can do it, too. That's why we _need her_ , Dwight. Need her _alive_. Even if you _don't_ believe me about Audrey, Mara can remove Troubles." He tells Dwight about the shadow policemen, when Mara decided she wanted her own private army, and the attempt to let him control the weather that didn't really work. "She said she was running out of things she could do with me." He screws up his lips and then, after a moment, tells Dwight about the way she changed the control Trouble to include William.

Dwight is quiet for a long time, and his steps have stilled. While Nathan didn't exactly spell it out, he's told enough. Nathan thinks his face is probably red, and though he can't hide it from view, he ducks it down, chin against his chest.

There's movement from Dwight. "Drink," he says, quietly, and the scent of cherry cola reappears beneath Nathan's nose. After Dwight withdraws he's quiet, and his pacing footsteps _pad_ in a much shorter arc than before. Eventually he stops and moves closer again. "I can see why Duke was so desperate to pull you out. They'll make you one of them for real, sooner or later."

"I won't let them," Nathan promises, his voice soft and low. "I'm there for Audrey. As long as she's there, I can't forget why _I_ am. She'll always be more important."

Silence. Dwight may believe him about his intentions with Mara and William, but he thinks Nathan's crazy when it comes to Audrey. Thinks she's all hallucinations or wishful thinking. Hell, so did Nathan, for the longest time.

"If you catch Mara," Nathan says, "we can prove it. There must be _something_ we can do to bring out Audrey again. It's happened twice now."

"Mm," Dwight grunts.

Nathan asserts, fiercely, "Audrey was with me all the way through the void. She's the only reason I stayed with Mara." His frustration is starting to mount up. It's hard to hold the forcefields back, even knowing he'd hit Dwight, even not knowing what else he'd be hitting, including parts of himself. He think's he's tied in a seated, upright position and his hands are behind him, but the world is a morass of guesswork. He wants to _see_ again, almost enough to risk it. He tries to brush his head against his shoulder, assuming he's right about where his _head_ and his _shoulder_ actually are. He has freedom of movement to do that, until something catches him.

Dwight's face is close enough to smell his breath. "Don't do that. I don't want to have to put some kind of a collar on you."

Nathan hopes no-one ever presents that idea to Mara. "I can get out of this in an _instant_ , damn you. I just can't get out of this _safely_ \- for you or for me."

Dwight's breathing goes tenser. Mentioning that was a mistake. "Then stay a little while longer, and humour us. We'll wait for Duke to report in."

"I want my _eyes_ back." It come out like a threat. Nathan's anxiety is rising. After yesterday, keeping any kind of cool while being restrained is very difficult, even if he knows they don't - necessarily - mean him harm, and certainly don't hold Mara's and William's sorts of intentions. He might lose control of the forcefields anyway.

"I know, Nathan. I'm sorry this has to be what works." There's a rustle from the side of him. Dwight's changed direction, his steps quiet. When he moves now, he opts to go _behind_ Nathan, where his movements are harder to determine from careful listening.

It's not unreasonable that they're afraid of him, but it makes Nathan's blood boil anyway.

"Tell me about the castle." Something in Dwight's voice has changed. A lightness, as if he's trying to sound casual, but it's undercut by wariness. Nathan can't figure it out. "Does it have any defences other than your shadows?"

Nathan's hackles are up, threat-alerts on high, but Dwight isn't _doing_ anything. Is it something he wants? Something about this question? He shifts uneasily. He can hear the sounds of his own movement, but they're too restricted to really register _as_ movement with the body-sense he has. He can generally tell where his body is if it's moving, but there has to be a certain level of exaggerated _shift_. "Natural ones. Cliffs on one side, trees on another." Duke and Jennifer landed on the low side of the island and tried to cut up through the trees. "I didn't make a moat and fill the ramparts with burning oil, if that's what you're asking. It's enough. You're not going to get in that way, Dwight. The shadows..."

The shadows aren't dependant on _his_ functions - they're still there right now, guarding the castle while Nathan's away. They'll be there even if Nathan's locked unconscious. It occurs to him suddenly that Dwight might believe otherwise.

It's difficult for Nathan to tell when he's tired, groggy, losing consciousness, without _feeling_ to guide him. But he realises now that his words have been getting slower and slower, harder to form. He mumbles, and it seems that's all he has left, "Don't go to the island, Dwight. The shadow guards..." He loses track of what he's saying. His head is sagging forward on his neck, enough that he can _tell_ , and Dwight isn't picking it up this time.

It wasn't in the drink. He has more trust in his heightened sense of taste than that, and too much time has passed. And Dwight, at that time, was more _interested_ than _afraid_. Of course, Nathan can't feel a needle. Wouldn't react, wouldn't know. He wouldn't put it past Dwight to have something like that, hailing from his days as Haven's fixer.

Nathan wants to confront Dwight about the betrayal. He'd thought they were trying to reach an understanding. He thought he had a potential ally. Instead, the world - such of it as he has left to him; already small, and narrow, and dark - slides away.

* * *

A tree catches her, cradling her in its branches like a friend. Mara has always considered herself to have an excellent rapport with shrubbery. She lies with her head spinning, looking up through the branches and soaking in the reality of not being dead, and the world seems unaccountably pleasant. Then, after a short while, her dizzy and not-very-coherent contemplations are replaced by _anger_ as her brain resumes function. She has _two_ gunshot wounds in her body, William is lost although certainly not dead, and they have taken Nathan from her.

Duke engineered it, she thinks. Maybe she can find it in herself to kill him after all.

Anger tightens her muscles and shifts her position reflexively - and her position, already tenuous, teeters for a moment before the bottom drops out of the world as a branch gives way with an audible _crack_. She falls out of the tree.

She does not make a sound until she rises out of the undergrowth, and then she curses everything. The injuries inflicted by Haven's would-be protectors sting more fiercely than ever for the fall.

William did not get shot out of the sky and torn apart by the rabble on the ground, because _she_ is - relatively - unharmed. Likewise, he knows the same about her. That she cannot reach his mind at the moment she presumes to be because he is busy. Well. She need not worry about William; he can take care of his own skin. Since she is wandering loose in Haven, and _Duke took Nathan_ , it is Nathan's fate with which she will concern herself.

She wonders if there's anyone left in Haven with whom pretending she is merely Audrey Parker will still _work_.

She does not want to think about Audrey. Nathan's betrayal this time is a dull burn, less important than getting him back. She cannot think about living a half-life, sharing her existence with that figment, that phantom, nor how she can possibly free herself of it now. She should at least be able to count on them sharing the same goal - of rescuing Nathan - if Audrey were to return now. Yet those _fools_ were ready to hand themselves over to the townsfolks' mercy. As if this town would have any, after all she has done.

The tree she fell into is in the garden of a small, idyllic house. Mara tries the door and finds it unlocked. She enters straight into the kitchen and makes her first act to take a knife from the block there. A moment later, a voice calls, "You're early, Roger!" from the next room. A woman walks through the open doorway, only to gasp and jolt back at the sight of Mara, her eyes widening and mouth opening to draw in breath.

"Do _not_ scream," instructs Mara, who has absolutely no patience for anyone's dramatics right now. If a scream does emerge from this woman's mouth, she's going to ram the knife down her throat and have done. She flicks her eyes down to her bloodied shoulder and wrist. "Give me bandages and antiseptic. I'll go. And everyone is happy."

The woman nods frantically, eyes on the knife, and sidles past her to a specific cupboard. Mara steps around and makes a study of the room, craning her head quickly through the door into the rest of the house. "Nice kitchen," she says.

That pride visibly starts to inflate the woman before the situation catches up with her, and she gulps and looks down, tells Mara a lot. She narrows her eyes and slides them over the... plants, the twee decor, the kitsch ornamentation. She doesn't know this woman. That always makes the results more erratic, more... interesting.

As a first aid kit is taken from a cupboard and placed on the table, Mara smiles sweetly, waggles the knife, and says, "Can I also trouble you for a glass of water?"

Twenty minutes later, she is heading out, her wounds attended, and the witness to her visit... well, will not be making any problems, at least for _her_. The exercise of her power has bolstered her confidence and her mood. She hopes Audrey Parker is _squirming_ , wherever she's holed up inside Mara's psyche.

She spies a man walking a dog, a little way down the street, and increases her pace to trot in that direction. "Excuse me, could I borrow your phone? Only _silly me_ , I seem to have forgotten mine, and my car... it's broken down a little way along the road."

She rolls the ball of aether around inside her pocket as she speaks, and when the man says, "Uh, sure," and extends the phone in bare, vulnerable fingers, she smiles as she reaches past the phone to clamp her hand around skin.

Two dogs where formerly there was one hare off down the street, barking, the smaller still trailing its lead. Mara catches the phone in her left hand before it drops to the road and raises it, dialling 911. "Is that _Laverne_? I'd like to speak to Dwight."

There's a pause from the other end. "Is that Audrey?"

"No," Mara responds bluntly. " _Dwight_."

"He's... not here, ma'am."

"Politeness will get you nowhere. Nor will delaying to try and trace my whereabouts from this call. You have my number. Perhaps you'd be so good as to pass it on to your chief. With a message: I want Nathan back. If I don't get him back, I will begin to afflict Haven with Troubles the likes of which _no-one_ has ever seen. Meanwhile, I find I must have just a _little_ patience left with you all, as I merely intend to devise a new gift for _everyone I meet_."

She cuts the call and stands in the street, suddenly weary. She waits for any sense of Audrey trying to overtake her will, expecting it to happen, but there isn't anything.

After a few attempts to reproduce Duke's number, she gives up. It's difficult, in this day and age of pre-programmed information, to remember the contacts of even close friends. She wishes she'd had Nathan buy them cellphones. She hadn't, at the time, for she'd had bigger plans that would mean they had no such need to rely on mundane utilities, and they were _not supposed to be separated_. She tries to contact William again but gets nothing. Audrey's resurgence has weakened their connection. She hates the silence where he should be and hopes he isn't harmed.

Cellphones, next time. Yes. She can make nuisance calls to Dwight and his tedious minions in the bargain.

A few cars line the side of the more populated road up ahead. Mara waggles her finger between them, selecting. Then she uses the skills from Audrey Parker's Orphanage Years to break into one and hotwire it.

Excellent. She is mobile again.

Mara steps on the gas and

... _Audrey_ almost ploughs the vehicle into a tree on the next bend.

She slews the car to a halt, the air hissing loudly through her throat. The last few hours land upon her, crushing out what breath she has left. _Mara_... She was Mara again, and Nathan's _gone_ , but at least so is William. She was Mara and she fought her _friends_ : Duke... Haven Police Department... Vince... and the Guard.

She remembers fleeing, falling, and after that-

She kicks open the door and slides out of the car, almost landing on her knees as her legs threaten to crumble. She doesn't have a thought for how she's left the stolen vehicle, the hazard it presents to other traffic, until she's stumbled a hundred yards or more down the road, and at that point she's not turning back. Only picks up her pace to a sprint to faster reach the people that she - that _Mara_ left Troubled in her wake.

The dogs are gone, nowhere to be seen. She can't fix that. She runs back into the house. How, _how_ is she supposed to draw the Trouble out of someone who is now a room? Hand to flesh, is how Mara does it. Audrey calls out, "Hello!" and runs her hands over the surfaces, searching, hoping for something to speak to her, looking for a sense of what to do.

The oven clicks on and the gas rings on the stove suddenly flare up fiercely, rising far higher than they'd ever be intended to for kitchen safety. The microwave and dishwasher start to rattle. "Okay," Audrey says breathlessly. "So you're here. I'm back to fix this. Okay?" She shuts her eyes and tries to focus on her palm, where it's flattened upon the counter above the dishwasher. "Come on, _come on_ ," she murmurs. " _Change_..." She feels a surge of power that cries out, rejected, as she pulls it back to her palm. Mara stirs within her, pitying the denied energy, attuned to it. The dishwasher starts to shake even more, though the microwave is quiet now and the lit gas rings on the oven have returned to normal levels. Audrey staggers back. The black stuff that came out of the counter falls off her hand like peeling paint.

There's no woman in sight. Audrey reaches over a trembling hand and jerks all the dials on the oven to zero. Then she yanks open the door. _No_. She's extremely relieved when it's the dishwasher door that yields to spill out a whimpering, jittery woman who is nonetheless human and intact.

Who looks at Audrey and panics, screaming and covering her head with her arms.

"No, please, I'm not-" Audrey tries to reach out and the reaction only gets worse. She reverses her hand and stares at her palm. The greyish smudges left there could be nothing more than dust. "I'm not Mara," she protests, faintly, feeling a heavy weight sink in her stomach. "I came back here to _fix_ what she did."

She can't face or help the woman's fear. She can only take herself away. She runs from Mara's crime and her own solution.

Outside, the dogs are still gone. She cured the woman, that's something. She should feel better. She _does not_. This isn't her... She's Audrey Parker, she _helps people_. She doesn't do this. Doesn't - doesn't _create_ Troubles.

Yet she remembers how to do it. How to _undo_ it. Remembers _doing_ it.

Remembers exactly, now, Mara's reasoning for why she's still around, and the conviction that there isn't any such thing as Audrey Parker at all.

She has to, _has to_ be wrong.

"I'm Audrey Parker," she says aloud. Her voice sounds disconcertingly fragile, ready to crack. "I help the Troubled."

She realises how much she needs Nathan and his faith in her that extends beyond reason. Ever since Mara took over her body, she has always had him. She may have only come back at all because of him, in response to Mara's treatment of him - when she first enslaved him to her will, that first night in the void. She attached herself somehow to Nathan's consciousness to survive back then. Maybe that's why she feels his absence so acutely now. Maybe it's not.

The belief he has in her is a powerful thing, perhaps even enough to hold her together. Yet now he has been taken away from her. She can't fall apart; she needs to fight Mara _alone_.

She calms herself enough to grimace at the sight of the stolen car she left slewed across the road. It's stealing, compounding Mara's stealing, but she gets back into it, needing to be away from here, needing...

 _Nathan_. Duke has him. She feels fury rise in response to that thought, but it's Mara's fury. She drags herself back and makes herself think rationally. They _came here_ to turn themselves in. Despite the Guard's interference and Mara's return, they've actually achieved half of that goal. What Audrey _needs_ is to get in touch with Dwight.

Mara already tried to contact Dwight. If Audrey goes to the police station, will they shoot her on sight? After the earlier wide-scale destruction, _trigger-happy_ is going to be the understatement of the fucking century, she thinks grimly. HPD officers were there. People _died_. She doesn't know if any cops, any _colleagues_ , were among the dead.

The jumble in her head isn't conducive to safe driving. Another near-miss and she pulls over, shaking worse than ever.

This isn't her. It's not Mara, either. Trying to share headspace is going to unravel them both. Will either of them truly win, if they fight, or will they just destroy the mind they co-habit?

She's been stopped for an unmeasured interval, letting it chase circles through her head, before something snaps her out of staring into space and makes her look up at where she is.

At first she doesn't recognise it, _then_ she doesn't believe it. It... this _used_ to be a picturesque street, the same one where she lived in her B&B for her first few weeks in Haven. Now half of it is a _hole_ in the ground. What she almost hit was the large warning sign erected right before the blocked-off area.

She climbs out of the car, hand clamped over her mouth, for a closer look. She's not sure if the hand is meant to hold back a sob or the urge to throw up.

The pit is tens of feet deep, edges sheer like cliffs, and there are household objects, clothes, and children's toys among the rubble.

"Excuse me!" she yells to a woman who's walking past on the other side of the street, taking a temporary footpath through someone's front yard to avoid the hole. "Wait, _please_... Can you tell me what happened here?"

When the woman turns around, Audrey realises she knows her. Recognition sparks in the other woman's eyes, too, coming hand in hand with _fear_. "Oh my God," says Marion Caldwell.

"Don't," Audrey begs. "It's _me_ , you _know_ me, it's _Audrey_... What happened to this place?"

Harsh words confirm her worst fears. " _You_ happened! What do you _think_?!" Marion always had a temper that belied her sweet face and small stature... She may be afraid of Mara, but this woman was never harmless. Storm clouds start to gather overhead, far faster than if this was any natural phenomenon.

Audrey backs off. "Marion, you need to stay in control, remember?"

"'Control'?!" Marion flings back, and the sky which had been clearing since earlier that morning is almost black in the blink of an eye. There's a line of blue sky left around the whole of the horizon, a crack where daylight still gets in, with a surreal, almost vertigo-inducing effect, but overhead the sky _rumbles_ and it almost seems to shake the ground. Squally rain, that's there and then gone in wild bursts, belts the pavement, puddling underfoot in an instant. "Why? Because I might _hurt someone_...? It seems to me-" Marion's yelling above the natural fury she's called down, but backing away from Audrey all the same "-that I'd be doing Haven a _favour_ getting rid of you! Forget storm damage! Fourteen people died here!" She jabs her finger at the hole in the ground. "They said you walked away _singing_ after giving the Trouble that did this!"

"It wasn't me-" Audrey tries desperately.

"Vince and Dave had pictures!" Marion howls back. "There are Troubles in the _Herald_! Nobody's hiding any more. No-one can get in or out of town for the _giant invisible wall_! And everyone knows what you did! I thought you were here to help, but it was you from the start!"

"It's not-" Audrey begins, but she can't even voice the protest. She can't find a defence. Her eyes sting. It's not the wind that's whipping the rain in her face that's to blame. She ran from the crimes of Mara, before, and she's probably going to have to run from Marion, too.

Lightning strikes down, catching a gatepost less than six feet away. She yelps and leaps back from it. She can feel the energy of it, the static charge that fizzles in her scalp and fingertips. The sky rumbles and electricity flickers among the clouds, readying another shot.

Marion doesn't laugh or gloat. Her teeth are grit and her eyes are wide in horror. Nathan had talked her down once, Audrey knows. Nathan, Marion would have frozen. Audrey, she intends to fry.

Marion isn't violent like this. In grief, in anger, her Trouble raged out of control before. This is an anger she's working to sustain and use as fuel. She knows she has a dangerous power, deadly when it's unleashed, and knows the woman responsible for cursing all of Haven is standing in front of her. Marion is out of her depth, but Marion has a weapon of epic proportions and, for Haven, she is determined to use it.

She may even have the right idea.

But Audrey wants to _live_. She's rather surprised to discover it's so, that it's not so easy to surrender her life when everyone is trying to end it. "Marion, _no_!"

She senses the build-up in the air - another blast collecting - and she dodges purely at random, hoping for the best. It misses by slightly more margin than the last, but the charge the air carries is significant enough that she feels a low-grade electrical jolt seem to humm through her bones anyway.

Running is no option: too much open ground where Marion's lightning strikes can pick her off. Audrey's only choice is to lunge for Marion, physically grappling with the smaller woman. Surely Marion won't try to kill herself in the bargain.

...Except that she lost the love of her life not two months ago, and very well _might_.

"Marion, please listen..." She struggles with the other woman, who shrieks and whimpers in outrage and pain, and screeches angry defiance as she tries to fight back. She wasn't prepared for a physical attack, and Audrey is trained while she is not. Inside, Mara quietly revels in her swift physical domination of her opponent. "I am _Audrey Parker_. The woman who caused the new Troubles in town... The one who caused the Troubles originally... Her name is _Mara_ , and she's not me! I'm still Audrey!"

Sheet lightning burns the ground, a wall of energy slicing thirty feet to their right, down the centre of the street. Most of it disperses into the hole.

"Marion, you're going to hurt somebody!" Audrey gasps. "Somebody _else_!" That much seems necessary to add. Her practised grip is hurting Marion, as she twists her arm further, but it doesn't lessen the threat from the weather. It's _increasing_ it: the sky seems to _explode_ with light. The next burst could destroy the rest of the street.

No...

Stop.

 _Think_ , she tells herself.

She has Marion's bare skin under her palm, can feel a racing pulse, anger-flushed flesh... and something else, thrumming beneath all the normal signs of life. Something she can feel in her bones, in her soul, shifting and alive, powerful and calling to her.

 _There_...

Audrey calls back to it. Mara, who also wants to survive, is bubbling and helpful beneath the surface. Mara wants to transform it - recreate Marion's Trouble as something terrible and painful and deadly, to crush Marion for daring to raise a hand against her.

Audrey says firmly, _No_. She keeps control by a thread, and pulls the Trouble out of Marion with a shaky lack of finesse that attracts Mara's scorn. The sky starts to clear as the power behind its fury is broken down again into its raw state. Audrey's palm feels gummed with the stuff, which is rife with potential and ready and waiting to be used again.

 _I don't want you!_ Audrey hurls at it, and like before, it petrifies and cracks and starts to crumble off her skin in flakes.

 _Cowardly fool_! Mara hisses in her belly, then goes quiet.

Marion is still hanging from Audrey's armlock, her mouth open in shock, not even struggling any more. Audrey convulsively lets her go and staggers back.

"You... you took it away." Marion finds words before she does, all the same.

"Yes!" Audrey gasps. "Mara gives Troubles. I... _I_ can take them away."

"But she's still there." So Marion saw that. Was it the same thing Duke saw, what feels like an aeon ago, the first time she ever did anything like this? The flash in her eyes when they were both so connected, intimately Trouble-entangled.

"I know," Audrey says. "But I'm here _now_. I want to help. The whole of Haven is out to kill me - kill _Mara_. I need to get to Dwight."

Marion steps away and raises both her hands in a helpless gesture. Everything in her manner says she no longer intends to try and hinder Audrey.

She _can't_ hinder Audrey.

It gives Audrey pause, thinking on that. Like there's something she should say, or do, something she _could_ say or do to make this better. But if there is, it won't come to her. There's nothing more she can do but leave Marion, Trouble-free and hugging her arms around herself, eyes wet from pain, drenched from the brief rain she called and so powerlessly human. Audrey, intensely disturbed by the encounter, hurries back over to her stolen car.

Driving is _far_ safer than being outside and displaying her face in full view for all of the long walk to the police station.

She's only driven a few streets when her stolen phone rings. She pulls over again, her heart loud in her chest as she answers.

" _Mara_ ," Dwight's voice growls. "Where are you and how did you get Bernard Rickles phone? What did you do?"

...Dwight knows _everyone_. It just has to be a truth. Even now, she's struck by that, and incredulous enough that she even lets out a weak laugh. "Oh my God," she breathes, feeling the panic fluttering in her chest start to settle, or at least find a different rhythm. "Dwight... Thank goodness..."

" _Audrey_?" he asks, incredulous. "Audrey, is it really-?"

It takes her in ambush, and she feels her stomach flip. Suddenly the world is much more _angry_ and _raw_ and - albeit for reasons she can't place - suddenly so highly _amusing_ , and she's cackling into the phone like a madwoman. "Hello, _Dwight_ ," sneers Mara. "Aren't you just one _gullible_ G.I. Giant?"


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Duke walks back into the cabin feeling positively _haggard_ after the return to the battlefield - fucking _fruitless_ trip that it was. The whole area is nothing but a sea of police, rescue effort and injuries. Mara and William are nowhere in sight. _He_ can't find them. HPD are managing the scene - digging people out from under debris - while the Guard went after William. Reports say Mara fell, and the Guard seem to have written her off as dead, but she _can't be_ , else there wouldn't still be a William problem.

He came back in his truck, the thought of squeezing more of Nathan's blood from that rag making him queasy after the sights and smells of the aftermath. The weird weather on the way had him going for a few minutes, wondering who the hell had pissed off Marion again on top of everything else, but it cleared up almost as soon as it begun, so hell, maybe she just burned dinner.

What greets him when he slams through the cabin door doesn't improve his mood. " _Shit_ , Dwight! What happened? We agreed we were going to _talk_ to him!"

He gets shushed with a gesture and a sour face. Dwight is on the phone, or at least, has a phone to his ear. He brings it away briefly and pushes a button, then Duke can hear it ringing. "Mara," Dwight mouths.

" _The fuck_?" Duke mouths back. Dwight is on the phone to Mara?

Nathan is on the bed, sprawled out on his side, so his weight's not on his tied hands; his tied knees are pulled up to balance his form, pillows placed to support his head and neck. He looks like he was arranged like that by somebody who gave a crap about not damaging him, but it's still really obvious that he's really out of it, even with the blindfold.

Duke goes over and, shooting a glare back at Dwight with the phone, clicks his fingers in front of Nathan's nose a few times.

" _Mara_ ," says Dwight sharply, as the ringing stops. "Where are you and _how_ did you get Bernard Rickles' phone?"

Duke feels a chill as he hears Audrey answer, and it's so, so convincing for a moment... Well, _he's_ convinced: Nathan was right, she's still there... Then she pulls the switch, her voice changes, and of course it was only Mara, messing with them.

Messing with Nathan, too, Duke thinks. He'd almost... They'd both had him going. Had him thinking there was some hope.

Dwight swallows, just as devastated, but the expression on his face doesn't slip into his voice. "Where's Bernard?"

"I didn't call to talk about _dull_ little details, Dwight," Mara responds, hard as nails. "You know what I want. Where is he? _Now_." Duke can see Dwight's shoulders trembling with anger and he's having to put in effort not to close his hand hard enough to crush the phone.

"I don't think telling you that is something I want to do," he says, calmer than Duke can believe.

"You _don't_ want to find out what _I_ do if you don't give me Nathan back."

Dwight's face pinches. "Maybe I consider he's the more dangerous one, after the reports I've had back from my people this morning."

"He's a _boyscout_ ," Mara snaps. "But I made of him an excellent tool. The difference is, _I_ can make more. Keeping him will gain you nothing but my _anger_."

Duke shakes his head and mouths words at Dwight, gesturing and trying to communicate in mime. Dwight stares at him, then says slowly, "You know Nathan pretty well, don't you? All that time Audrey spent working at his side. Better than you know anyone else, here, I should think. I'd guess that's why the things you've done work so well. How you manage to fine-tune them so he can control them."

She huffs. " _Really_ , Dwight? He's like painting in oil colours on copier paper. I can find better materials in a heartbeat."

"...Ones that will follow you, like he does? Even when he doesn't want to?"

"True," Mara allows. "There _are_ other people I know passingly well, of course. Tell _Duke_ I said hi. I should think once I had his little girlfriend he'd also be quite amenable to doing everything I asked."

Duke mouths, "Bitch," as Dwight grimaces and returns, "But you _don't_ have Duke, and you don't have Jennifer, and you've put such a lot of work into Nathan."

"I want him _back_ ," Mara snaps. "Fact established. What will _you_ do with him, Dwight? Kill him? Threaten to kill him, with Duke standing right there? _I don't think so_. I should think that after what I've done, he's rather difficult to hold against his will. You can't _keep_ him, you can't use him to threaten or bribe me. I can, however, teach you whole new levels of _regret_ if you don't _give him back_!"

Dwight rolls his eyes. "Maybe I got regrets bigger than you know."

Duke's tired of this. "Give, give, _give_ -" He reaches out for the phone, waggling his fingers. Dwight shakes his head and mouths reluctance to allow it, but after a moment sighs and relinquishes the phone to Duke. "Hey, Mara. Nathan's out of the equation. Get used to it. He's your... your fucking _chess queen_ , and if you think we're stupid enough to give him back, you have to be out of your mind."

Dwight's nodding in approval, but honestly the real reason Duke will never, ever hand Nathan over to Mara is for _Nathan_.

"If you think I'd roll over and work for you the way he does, you're _also_ out of your mind. Forget about going near Jen."

"You're so much less fun than you used to be." Duke can hear the pout in Mara's voice. "How would that Duke even still be involved in this? He'd have left in his _boat_ while the going was good."

"We're not on my boat, Mara." And, fuck, obvious much? Still, it's almost funny that they're both playing the same game, listening for clues to locate the other.

"I may not know where you are," she spits, and Duke can hear the gnashing of teeth, "but don't think I can't find you. I told you, Nathan's _mine_. You don't even comprehend how much so, or what that means."

"Goodbye, Mara." Before Duke can blink, Dwight follows up the firm words by reaching over and folding his hand around the phone and Duke's fingers both. He hears the call cut off.

"What-?" Duke starts. "Do you think it's true, that she knows where we are somehow? Where Nathan is," he corrects, and it feels like he has a boulder in his stomach, a cold fucking _rock_ just sitting in there, weighing him down. _Nathan, what the fuck have you let her do to you_?

"She thinks she can. She's rattled enough to tell us that," Dwight says levelly. "She's also a manipulator. We don't let her get that wedge in."

"We need to move. Shit, maybe - you know, she's right. I should take him, not just to the _Rouge_ , but out to sea, the opposite direction from their island. As far away from Haven and as fast as possible. Mara won't be able to find him if he's in, in _Burma_. She won't be able to even get to us in the middle of the ocean. Unless she wants to take up piracy, which yeah, I can see that wouldn't be completely out of character."

It's a _great_ plan. But wait- "Wait, _wait_ \- You don't think that's what she's aiming for, putting that suggestion out there?" Mara waiting at the _Rouge_ for him to bring Nathan right to her... or else walk in himself and get snatched. She's declared an interest, after all.

Dwight's expression darkens. "Impossible to say for sure, but the idea's out there now. Better to move the _Rouge_ out of its berth or else, hell, hire another boat entirely, maybe out of Camden, bring Nathan across land to it."

Duke's nodding, his thoughts tracking Dwight's perfectly.

"But we can't. We need him here to control Mara."

"You-!" Duke consciously makes himself bring the volume down. "You _weren't_ going to bargain with her."

"No," Dwight swings away and goes to Nathan on the bed, to check on his pulse and breathing, all of which gives him a great excuse not to meet Duke's eyes. "But I'm not naive enough to think she's incapable of creating a situation where we might _have_ to."

"And if she finds this cabin, we lose him for nothing! That - that _fiasco_ back there has to mean something, Dwight!"

Dwight turns, then, his eyes like brooding stormclouds. "I _know_."

"She can't get him back. Now, with us, he has a chance. If she gets him back, he's toast. He's _barely_ functional as a human being any more as it is."

Haven has a long history of human sacrifice - the noble act of screwing over the one to save the many. Duke shouldn't be surprised when Dwight's eyes only go harder and sadder. He sighs.

"Nathan is... appallingly dangerous. Duke, your Trouble... Can we - if we took him to Gloria, or - I have Guard allies in the hospital. We could arrange a room. You stop his heart. We have the equipment there on hand to do our damnedest to revive him."

"You're _kidding_. We might kill him! It's not like pressing a switch! Besides, once Mara gets hold of him all she does is put it all back. Like happened to me."

"It would make him easier to hide and handle," Dwight says, unmoved by the protest. "You want to save him."

"And on the subject of what happened to me," Duke carries on, his stomach seeming to revolve like a washing machine, "we have no idea what happens if I kill him and absorb nine fucking Troubles - or whatever he has now - all at once."

"It's seven."

"Seven! Nine! Who cares?" Duke clicks his hand in Dwight's face. "Seven Troubles! You saw what happened last time. It's really going to help us if my thing goes crazy again."

Dwight doesn't say anything, and in the silence Duke loses all his fury as he realises just what it is Dwight's thinking behind that apprehensive, assessing look in his eyes. Realises he's right. It _is_ far from just the possibility of killing Nathan that's scaring him. Duke sits down in the chair in the centre of the cabin, the one Nathan was tied to earlier. All his energy just drained out through his boots.

Eventually, he offers, "I haven't killed anyone, taken any Troubles, since... Harker. Since my Trouble went haywire. I don't know what happens. I know I'm still Troubled, since the blood still makes me a... a fucking high as a kite superhero. I don't know if she changed it or just took out all the... excess. Could be that _I_ end up with Nathan's seven Troubles instead of Nathan." He swallows. "I'm betting he can control them better."

"But we don't control him."

Duke glowers. "You control _me_ in your dreams, Sasquatch."

Dwight breathes out. Irritation rolls off the noise. "You're not going to use them for Mara."

"He's _Nathan_. We talk to him." Duke glares at Dwight, meeting him ire for ire. "You _knew_ I wanted to do that." He pries himself up off the chair to go slap Nathan in the face, though he knows that's useless. "When does he come out of this?" He demands, straightening up from the bed.

"He's been down for over an hour. Could be another hour if I don't dose him again, could be he'll drift straight into sleep. He's exhausted. You can see it in his skin, in his eyes. I haven't seen that kind of exhaustion since Afghanistan."

Duke mutters a curse. " _Man_. He's a bastard to wake up at the best of times."

"We need to make sure we have him under control," Dwight says. "He said he could take us all out and free himself, that the only reason he hadn't was because he couldn't be sure to do it without casualties."

"Meaning _you_ ," Duke points out flatly. "And you respond to that by knocking him out and shredding whatever fucking trust he has left!"

"You mean while we had him _tied up and blindfolded_ already?! Anyway, I figured I'd be happier with him awake while you're here."

Duke swears and leans over Nathan again. Dwight stomps over to the small kitchen area to put the water boiler on and gets cups out without asking. Duke has to concede that it's probably a good idea, before they come to blows. " _Nathan_ ," he says loudly, leaning over to yell it in Nathan's ear. It seems to him that it's worth trying. "Nathan! Wake up!" He unfastens his collar again and a few more buttons, gets a look at the new scar as well as a closer look at the old burns. He sighs and sits down next to Nathan, placing an unfelt hand on his shoulder while he sleeps almost without sound or movement, totally out.

"Mara's gone," he speaks up, realising he never delivered any report about what he went out for, though he's willing to bet Dwight's already had all the reports that he needs. "Which you know. William's gone. Vince's people said they were separated, both wounded. They're searching for William along the coast, beating the coves and inlets. Mara... well, I guess she was heading to town."

"Bernard's place is between the ambush site and town." Dwight picks up his phone again with a curse and makes a call to get people on that clue, check out the guy, who knowing Mara is probably dead or a danger to other people by now. Whoever's on the other end tells him something that he _does not like_. Duke listens to the worried grunts and expulsions that are Dwight's half of the conversation with alarm. After he comes off the phone, Dwight turns his back and ignores any questions until he's poured himself a large black coffee and taken a long gulp. After that, he comes over and pushes another coffee into Duke's hand. "Vince is in the hospital. Collapsed. Heart attack or stroke, they're trying to figure it out now."

" _Shit_." But given his age and what he was just in the middle of, who could be surprised? "Oh, man, this is a mess, this is such a freakin' _mess_..."

"I'm going to need to talk to the Guard," Dwight says, gulping from his coffee. There's a _lot_ of intent in that voice.

"Better you than anyone else," Duke concedes.

"I need to know you won't do anything rash if I leave you with him." He jerks his head at Nathan, on the bed.

"Mara-" Duke starts.

"She's _injured_. She's in town. She's heading the other way. You have a weapon, and besides which, if we could draw her here, _we want her_." He considers. "I'll radio for Stan and a few guys to come stand guard outside."

"No-" Duke suddenly has a horrible feeling. "Mara... He's, any of them, they'd be cannon fodder for her. I'm not. It's better if it's me." Same reasoning he used when he decided he should be the one to take down Nathan. The fucking circus didn't help _there_.

"You think she won't kill you?"

"I think she kept Nathan alive because Audrey loved him. I think she's already saved my life once." Agreed to do it as part of the bargain for Nathan, but he's pretty sure she didn't have to. He thinks... He'd rather face Mara without anyone else to get in her way. "I've got this. If she comes here, if she doesn't. I swear."

"I don't believe she'll come," Dwight says. "The Guard and the police are hunting her. If she has some kind of sixth sense about where Nathan is, it's still going to take time to track him down. She'll need a pretty hefty four wheel drive to get up here." Duke's truck had bounced along the road up to this place like a hyperactive marsupial. "Audrey wasn't superhuman, Mara's still in the same body. They're saying she was shot twice. Or William was, same difference. She's going to have to bide her time to make a play for Nathan."

"They _heal_ ," Duke warns him balefully. "Don't forget. It can take them several hours."

"I'll be back before then," Dwight promises. "Then we'll move him. Camden, or elsewhere out of town, maybe." He drains the rest of his coffee, grabs his coat, and says, "Good luck," as he heads for the door.

"No, you, man," Duke rebuffs. "Out there was crazy. That clean-up is- you have no idea." An idiot decided to use a _giant building_ as a weapon. He's pretty sure that even Dwight the Cleaner has never seen anything like the mess, even though he leaves with a noncommittal grunt.

The door shuts and locks softly. Duke gets up to draw the bolts from the inside. Then it's just him and Nathan, who isn't particularly contributing right now.

He wants to be on the _Rouge_ , out at sea. That's the best idea yet, even if it came from Mara. Him and Nathan... Jen, maybe, if she's not too busy, if she's not too freaked (he hopes that whatever she's doing at the hospital pays off)... Load up with fishing gear and supplies to last a month. He can put Nathan back together, in the calm and the stillness, the salt air and the rhythm of the waves.

Instead, he sits and waits in the cabin, and tries to keep in mind all the reasons he _should_ sit quiet and trust Dwight.

The gun he's packing didn't see much use in the battle, but he draws it out and keeps it in his hand now, and listens hard for anything like the sounds of an engine.

* * *

She reels as she comes off the phone and the world seems to kick her sideways. Mara's fury at being cut off lingers, but it's Audrey who catches herself and staggers in the street. Mara sinks low in her awareness, exhausted after the effort expended to throw herself into the conversation and turn Dwight against them, so soon after she lost control of the body before; now she has nothing left.

But what she _did_ , she's done effectively. There seems little point calling Dwight back now. He won't believe that she's real, herself, and nor will Duke. Audrey clutches the silent phone and fights against tears. Those won't do any good. She has to take _action_.

Now, while Mara's quiet and cannot stop her, has to be the time to do it. Fast and bold, no hesitation. She came here with a task to do. They have Nathan: that much is already accomplished.

She needs to put Mara in a cell. She also needs to stay alive - she only just got this body _back_. But she's beginning to see that she may have to fight all of Haven as well as Mara, to keep it. The Guard are out to kill her. Even the police, after earlier - even fellow officers who knew her as Audrey may now shoot on sight.

She needs to put Mara in a cell, but if she shows up and tries to surrender herself to them, she doubts she'll have the chance to get that far.

With Mara in a cell, knowing she's safe from doing harm to others, _worse_ to Nathan, maybe she can work on establishing her own personality again. Maybe Mara will dwindle, in time. Audrey wants to _live_. Nathan gave up too much, of himself and Haven, to give her the chance.

She puts the phone away with shaking fingers. Given the state of HPD's resources, she's not worried about being tracked by it. She gets back into the stolen car and turns the engine on.

The world _moves_.

Or... it's something inside her, and for a moment she thinks Mara is taking over again, though it didn't seem possible minutes ago. Then the change in the light level makes her look up, through the stolen car's windshield, in time to see the sky change.

It's like a tinted shade on the sky starts to collapse from the centre out to the horizon in every direction, peeling back to reveal the world with different, brighter hues. The feeling inside her is that of one of Mara's largest works coming undone. She feels the barrier between Haven and the outside world collapse like it was a part of herself.

She's got so used to accepting the light as natural that it's strange when the real, unfiltered day rushes in. The difference is subtle, and the death of the Trouble should be a joy - another of Mara's creations come undone - but it feels like an _ache_.

Mara's too spent to react. Audrey makes herself put the car into gear and drive. She needs to get to the police station. She needs to do it without being seen. She doesn't know what's happened here, but if somehow other people are undoing Mara's works, Mara's schemes are unravelling, then that's no bad thing. Hope flares inside her, stronger than before.

A patrol car causes her to pull up and duck down to allow it to pass. _Rafferty_ , she sees in the driver's seat. Rafferty won't hesitate to shoot.

Audrey wonders who was there, earlier, who was hurt and who _saw_. Who among all the people she's worked with, friends and colleagues, think they've seen absolute proof that she's a monster now.

It's going to be hard to get into the station, but she has the advantage that she knows it well. Around the back, she abandons the car illegally parked, and leaves it in pretty much a sprint for a storeroom window where she knows the catch is broken and has been for months. It yields reluctantly when she gets her fingernails in and hauls it open from outside.

The physical act of getting inside is less easy. Even without the bullet wounds in her flesh, one thing HPD don't do a lot of is assault courses and athletic feats. The window is high and it's a squeeze, forcing her to twist, catching her injuries and making her bite down on cries of pain. She's kicking her legs, squirming and sliding to get through, when she hears a shout. She moves too abruptly and falls inside uncontrollably, gracelessly, hits the top of a table and then rolls off to hit the floor, hard. Pain whites out her thoughts for an instant. The window slams shut behind her.

Whoever shouted outside didn't see her face. Maybe it was someone greeting a neighbour, or calling their dog. She huddles underneath the table, waiting for the door to open, clutching a stack of files in front of her. But no-one enters. She makes herself get up. Her heart is pounding so hard it feels like its rocking her whole body.

From the store room, it's easier to make it to her and Nathan's office than anywhere else. She _needs_ to get to the cells, and that's not going to be easy, but she also can't leave Mara with ammunition, just as she can't risk arming herself with a regular weapon... She needs to find all the goo-balls that stowed on her person and shut them securely away.

 _Aether_ , Mara calls it, but that's Mara, and she'll take Duke's name any day.

Their office feels like a heartbreaking piece of history: a museum piece, preserved. Like it's somewhere she'll never get to inhabit for real again. Nathan's desk, his photographs. Her piles of books on folklore. The stupid little trinkets they both kept.

Nathan has an old coffee jar where he stores some candies, for calming down kids who've been witness to crime scenes, or otherwise end up in the station. Audrey opens it and starts dropping the black spheres inside with the candies, searching her pockets and shaking out her clothes. They _move_ , squirming and rattling as if they know they're being abandoned, but she tightens the lid on the jar and for good measure, shoves it into a locker as she heads outside into the corridor and passes the bay where the lockers stand. She hides the key on top of the locker unit, stretching on her toes to reach.

Mara's diminished. But how much longer will she be quiet? Audrey's actions are agitating her evil half already. The contradictory thoughts scratch at the underside of her brain. Discerning the boundaries between them, when Mara's voice is hers, is tenuous. A matter of a certain flavour to the thoughts.

Haven police station isn't the kind of place where she can grab a uniform and sneak in, hat pulled forward to obscure her face like some TV spy. Everyone here is _known_. She decides her best option, therefore, is to use that. She'll walk calmly and briskly as if it's any normal working day. After all, Audrey Parker reported in for duty here for the best part of last year, and also recently, even if her hair is changed again. Recognition and force of habit may work in her favour, placing her as a natural part of the surroundings upon casual, unthinking glance.

Retrieving the keys to the cells, it works better than she'd even expected. Officer Conyers goes so far as to look up and vaguely say, "Hi, Audrey," and doesn't realise what he's done. Her heart pounds even louder after that, though, and it's an effort not to break into a run.

The cell keys dig hard into the damp palm of her hand. She feels Mara shift inside her, still buried but ever more restless. It's like she's aware in there. Audrey _almost_ remembers hearing the world like distant echoes, louder on the last occasion. She'd hoped the changing experience was a sign she was getting stronger... She almost doesn't want to think about the possibility that Mara is having the same experience, and what that might mean.

She doesn't know if it's Conyers who eventually realised his mistake and raised the alarm, or someone else, but she hears the cry go up from behind her when she's only a corridor's distance from the cells, and she starts running then.

* * *

Duke doesn't see Mara's goldfish-bowl-of doom around the town come down. He's inside the cabin, watching an unconscious Nathan who's being adamantly uninteresting about it. But he notices the light levels change and goes to look out of the window, confused, then pushes open the door and steps outside, first checking around with his gun drawn and held low in his hand, then looking up.

It's a moment before he registers what's different.

Fuck. _What_?

His heart skips a beat and his phone starts ringing. The barrier was _Jennifer_ 's self-assigned quest... Sure enough, he fumbles his phone from his pocket and it's her name on the incoming call. He raises it to his head and before he can say anything her voice fills his ear, excitable and victorious. "Duke - Duke, I did it! _We_ did it," she corrects, as though there's someone else there, but Duke can't hear anyone in the background. "Duke, this is Albert Hutton. Albert, this is Duke. Say hello."

"Hello, Mr. Hutton," Duke intones obediently, still thinking, _what_? Nobody says 'hello' back to him.

"There's - he's in the hospital," Jennifer says. "I can _talk_ to him. It broke his Trouble, Duke..." She sounds angry, the emotion creeping into her voice of a sudden. "He's unconscious, he's in a _coma_ , and Mara Troubled him anyway, to build her wall."

Duke takes a breath. He thinks he understands now. The Trouble to form a barrier around Haven was based upon being locked in. Jennifer pierced the patient's bubble with her ability to, to communicate _across_ barriers, across dimensions and worlds, and-

"I have to come back tomorrow," Jen says. "I have to keep coming back, but... Where are you? I'm leaving the hospital now. I can come and join-"

There's a _whump_ from behind Duke, like air displacement, things shifting. A moment later, before he's even fully turned to catch what the hell that was, it hits him, propelling him forward, a broad and even blow across the back of his body.

He flies into a tree that's four feet away, but the tree's hit, too, moving at the same time he does, creaking and cracking as it bends away from him and that lessens the blow. But when the force dissipates and the tree snaps back, _then_ he gets it full in his face, and ends up on the ground, groaning, phone no longer in his hand, trying to figure out _what just happened_? Broken branches rain down from the tree. One hits his outstretched leg hard, and he swears and rolls to protect his groin, because that came pretty close. He raises an arm to protect his head.

 _Nathan_ , he thinks.

He also thinks, _Jennifer!_ , but has no idea where his phone went, and right now-

His body doesn't want to obey but he makes it move, first crawling for the cabin, then using the door to hang onto to regain his feet. The wood groans and moves under his hand, more rickety than it was. The door itself is half hanging off. Nathan's _damn_ forcefield, which hit him, was losing energy by the time it hit him, or he'd be feeling a lot worse.

Nathan hasn't made it off the bed yet. He's tugging at the blindfold - at least he had the sense not to try and use the Trouble to remove that. His jeans are torn and his wrists are bleeding from somewhere. There are fragments of rope _literally_ all over the cabin, embedded in the planks of the walls, and the furniture. The cabin is _trashed_.

"...Holy fuck, Nathan," Duke says.

Nathan gives him a feral look, eyes spilling contradictory emotions, and leaves the blindfold askew on his head like a bandana as he squirms to the edge of the bed, keeping the bulk of the bed between them.

"Nathan, _Nathan_ ," Duke says quickly, holding his hands down in full view. "Dwight put you out all on his own. It was _not_ me. _Not_ my plan. I just want to talk. I mean, hell, we need to talk, right? Audrey. Mara. Don't tell me that we hashed out everything there was to be said about that the other day."

Nathan looks blank and surprised, and he's... watching Duke's body language, the way he's approaching Nathan as something that's - hell, like Nathan is something that's going to _hurt him_ , Duke realises, and stops.

He breathes, counting off for the breaths. They look at each other. And Duke tries to put fear aside. Because it's _Nathan_ , still, and they punch each other and argue, but at the end of the day that's - that's _them_. And Nathan had to cope with Duke having the advantage of the Crocker Legacy - badly, mostly - and now there's this. This fucking nightmare powerhouse that Mara's made of him. He said, a few days ago, that he was dangerous, but he seems almost oblivious of it in himself now. Like he expects on some level to be taken as the same old Nathan despite everything.

The surprise on his face says to Duke, _I'm not going to hurt you_... Putting aside the fact he already did. Then again, he hurt himself worse, judging from the _drip-drip-drip_ sliding down his wrists and hitting the floor.

They stand a moment longer before Duke says, "Let me get something for that." He moves, Nathan doesn't, except for shifting in place and curling a hand over the worst of the wounds, pressing down to curb the blood flow.

"I need to find her," Nathan says.

"You and everyone else," says Duke. He swallows. Okay, _okay_... Nathan isn't pissed about being knocked out, tied up, blindfold... He's standing here, just looking at Duke, like he's not dangerous enough that they had to do that to control him. But he's not doing anything _now_. "Guard seem to be on the trail of William. No-one knows where Mara _is_. Well, somewhere within the town boundaries. But in the wind."

"If they kill William-"

"Yeah, yeah," Duke cuts him off. He knows. "You think they'll manage to kill William?"

He watches Nathan pause to think, purse his lips and consider, then shake his head. Every line of him is severe. "He's not going to like being chased around. They're in Trouble."

 _God_ , thinks Duke. Not just at Nathan's chilling conclusion but the thought he knows William well enough to make it. At least the conclusion causes Nathan to relax... somewhat. "I need to get back to them before they do more harm."

"Like you weren't the one doing-!" Duke explodes, because Nathan, back there, _Nathan-_

"You attacked _me_!" he returns, more exasperated than anything else; weary and fed-up and fucked-up and just all over _done_ , like this argument's not worth his time.

It lands on Duke suddenly that he hates how Nathan doesn't seem to _mind_ the treatment at the hands of himself and Dwight, now he's escaped the drugs and the bonds. Like he's so accustomed to so much worse liberties taken on his person that it's easy to dismiss.

"I need to keep her alive," Nathan says. "You don't understand. I've seen her take Troubles away. Audrey _or_ Mara. We need her."

Mara's not interested in taking Troubles away, only in making more. Duke tries to focus upon getting the stuff to deal with Nathan's injury, even if most of what's in the cabin is in bits, but once he has the (broken) green box in his hand, he remembers his phone, and Jennifer, and swears. He flings the box down on the bed toward Nathan and swings away.

He stops halfway to the door, looking back. "You're not going to go anywhere? Do anything? Right?"

"I'll talk." Nathan gives him a cagey look and a puzzled from, unsure what Duke's doing as he resumes his charge out of the hanging-off door.

Duke finds his phone almost at once, but it's broken. "Jennifer's going to be _freaking out_ ," he tells Nathan, waving the plastic wreckage in accusation as he stomps back into the cabin. He supposes it's not really odd at all how the friction seems to put Nathan more at ease.

"Sorry." Nathan casts his eyes around the mess he made, then back at Duke's battered state. "You were out of the cabin. I'd waited. I-"

"I know," Duke says. "I don't supposed you have a phone?"

Nathan spreads his empty hands. No. The cabin doesn't have one, either. Jennifer's going to call Dwight, and Dwight will shoot back here, _probably_ with a bunch of the Guard in tow, and then all of them are going to fucking freak out because Nathan is standing awake and unrestrained, and they're _screwed_. Duke sighs.

"It helps to have my fucking eyes to use that Trouble," Nathan says sourly. He's picked up the first aid kit and is wrapping bandages around his wrist. Duke supposes it doesn't need cleaning - nothing to put infection in the wound. He ripped himself up with his own damn invisible forcefields. Duke edges around him to join the effort in time to secure the bandage. It's a mess of bloody fingerprints, and actually, Duke is pretty glad to avoid further contact with Nathan's _seven times Troubled_ blood.

Nathan becomes conscious of the same thing and moves his hands back as soon as Duke's fixed the bit that was giving him problems. He backs off to the faucet to rinse his hands.

"So how's things? Mara? _William_?"

"Mara was Audrey." And they're back to that again. "She _was_."

"She ran to help you."

But Nathan contradicts Duke's attempt at supporting Nathan's claim. "No. That was _Mara_. Before that, before the attack! Mara was _Audrey_. The attack made her revert. We were coming to town because she wanted to surrender."

The way Nathan's eyes are looking at him is angrily pleading him to understand. Duke wants to believe it, but he can't. He wants it to be true too much, and Nathan might not be evil, might be sufficiently himself to stand here and gripe at Duke like old times, but he isn't well.

"Yesterday was - Mara did something bad. Crossed a line. I think that's what... They're vacillating. Audrey for a while and then Mara. I'm not always sure what triggers it."

Duke listens incredulously. He wonders, after what he's already seen, what would have to constitute Mara _crossing the line_. "A trick," he chokes, inserting the words into a gap between Nathan's dogged insistence. "How do you know it's not a trick?"

"Because I _know_." And that's impatient, pissy Nathan from way back. "Even _if_ you figured out about Lexie before me." Nathan sits down abruptly on the edge of the bed, his anger seeming to have worn him out. Or... maybe it's more than that. All the colour's drained out of him along with his anger. "Have you got anything to eat?" he rasps, sounding tired to the bone.

Luckily, Dwight prepared for the long haul, and the tins of soup and beans and the like he brought up are crumpled but only a few are actually burst, and the stove seems to have bounced rather than broken and works when Duke puts it on. He hands Nathan an unopened bottle of soda that survived. Caffeine doesn't seem like a great idea even if all the mugs weren't in pieces. "Give me a moment."

"You know it doesn't have to be hot, right?" Nathan says, sarcastically.

Duke finds a packet of crackers - crumbs - to hand him to shut him up, and feels faintly sickened as he watches Nathan fall on them. He feels intensely _weird_ as he spends the next ten minutes mothering Haven's Most Dangerous. Nathan is Mara's prisoner as much as if he were physically chained to her, he thinks. He doesn't have to understand all the intricacies of those links to know they're there. Nathan's got his own agenda; he's trying to do... whatever it is he's doing. But he's still their victim, too.

"She feed you?" Duke asks slowly, when Nathan's just about done with the soup and the crackers, drinking the soup out of a metal bowl that survived the forcefield.

Nathan grunts. "Generally I feed them, but... yesterday I didn't really eat. It's been-" He looks away. "Ask Dwight. I'm not telling it again."

"Wow, thanks," Duke starts, bristling, but Nathan means it and ignores him. He's wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, looking carefully at his arm to ascertain whether there was anything to wipe off in the first place, whether there might be more. Duke sighs, catching the flush of Nathan's cheeks, and he doesn't say, _I know about Mara; I know about WILLIAM._ He lets Nathan keep that. Maybe it was easier to tell Dwight, who's more a colleague than a friend, who's certainly not a friend the way Duke is, the way that down the years they've almost loved each other as much as they've hated each other. "Fine," he says. "Be the silent type. What else is new?"

He's turning away, intending to show his back to Nathan and give him that privacy, when sudden, fast movement stirs behind him and hands land hard on his shoulder and his arm. "There's a car approaching outside," Nathan says next to his ear.

"Oh," breathes Duke. "Oh, damn." That's... laughably understated, but he doesn't have the thought capacity in the moment to muster more.

"It's not Mara," Nathan says, killing the worst of his fears.

"How-?"

"I'd know, Duke."

 _Fuck_. "Get under the fucking bed," Duke tells him. _He_ can hear the approaching engine now - no, it's cutting out, drawing to a halt outside.

"Whoever they are, I can deal with them."

See, he says things like that and then expects that Duke and anybody else will still treat him like harmless old Nathan Wuornos, who just can't feel anything. "Maybe I don't _want_ you to deal with them! Have you thought of that? Maybe I'm pretty damn sure _I'd_ rather be the one who deals with them!"

Nathan gives him a look like he's the one who's lost it and gets on the floor. And Duke - Duke isn't sure why he's protecting him. Maybe he _has_ lost it. But it's him and Nathan, it's the old groove, it's _them_. He'd thought that was gone for good, and it's like a compulsion, being back in Nathan's company. He can't break that fragile trust.

"Just stay quiet and stay under there," Duke hisses, and even the back of Nathan's head and shoulders seem to be judging him as they squirm, last, under the uneven frame of the wrecked bed.

Duke draws his gun anew and goes outside, wondering if it is Dwight and how many Guard he'll have brought. Wondering if Nathan lied to him and it's Mara after all.

It's Jennifer.

She's tripping out of the car door with a taser already in hand and gives a sharp, surprised cry when she sees him. "Duke! Oh my God, thank goodness!" Then his arms are full of her and he's feeling really confused. "The phone cut off, I - I was so worried!"

"I know." Duke's still looking for Dwight, but his attention gets pulled back to Jen, her hands on his face, her soft voice whispering questions.

"What happened? How's Nathan? Did he do this?" She can't really _miss_ the trees divested of branches and leaves, the door of the cabin hanging off.

Dwight's not coming. Jennifer's car is - well, it's mud-splashed and scratched up and he's going to hazard she's wrecked the suspension. But it's empty, no-one else getting out of it. No further vehicle sounds coming after her. He's confused and, okay, annoyed. Slightly annoyed. But Jennifer's exclaiming about the scratches on his face, and losing his shit because she rushed up here alone armed with just a taser probably isn't the correct reaction here. "It's okay. I broke my phone. But we're okay, I just couldn't contact you to tell you."

The cabin door creaks on its uneven hinges. Nathan stands in the doorway. Jennifer gapes at him, surprise and awe on her face, but Nathan is looking up at the sky. He barely seems to notice as Jennifer tows Duke up close to him and grabs one of his hands from where they hang bonelessly at his sides.

Duke realises he's seeing Nathan register for the first time that Mara's wall is gone. That they still had him blindfolded when that occurred. Neither of them comment on it, so he doesn't get an in-depth report on what Nathan thinks of that. After a moment, Nathan looks down at Jennifer holding his hand with a soft look on her face, and gets all embarrassed and bemused about it but... doesn't seem totally unhappy. He squirms a bit more as Jennifer lets go of Duke for a moment to hug him, though.

"I'm glad you're all right," she says, as she pulls Nathan's head down to her shoulder.

Duke is glad she wasn't here when they had him trussed like a turkey. He's abruptly pretty sure he and Dwight would have been seriously chewed-over had Jennifer seen that.

Jennifer has never particularly _got_ Nathan. But she cares. She always cares.

"I'm okay," Nathan mumbles, trying to disengage. It restores more of his humanity in Duke's watching eyes than anything else so far. Nathan's eyes return to the sky, then back to Jen. "You...? Albert Hutton? He's awake?"

She shakes her head with a touch of regret. "He can _hear_ me, though. Visiting him is just the decent thing to do. The poor man has been trapped in that living death for _months_."

Duke watches Nathan absorb the news that Mara's hold on Haven broke because somebody initiated conversation. There's something there as Nathan looks at the sky, some strange thought brooding at the back of his eyes that Duke isn't sure he'd like.

"So we're okay..." Duke finally manages to help Nathan wriggle free of Jennifer, pulling her back to ask what he needs to hear to her face. "Where's _Dwight_ , Jen? Don't tell me that oversized jerk just let you come up here on your own? In an insufficient vehicle, with no protection, no back-up."

 _Oh_. Duke sees the reaction in her face. "Dwight's - busy. Duke, Mara..." Jen's eyes flicker to Nathan, uncertain if it's really safe to continue. But after an intense moment of hesitation, she guiltily does. "Mara came to the police station."

* * *

She runs headlong into Stan. "Aud-" His eyes widen and his hand reaches for his gun before he's even finished voicing the instinctive impression.

Audrey _hurts_ inside, and Mara - Mara wants her to tear and wound in reprisal, so much so it's a distracting effort to hold back the urge to excess violence. The struggle takes place over a split second, but she is surprised to feel Mara deliberately surrender and sink down, not having energy enough to overcome her yet, leaving Audrey total control of the reins.

Mara may have her pride, but she also knows a thing or two about survival and opts not to screw around when they're under threat from an armed enemy.

Audrey, left to her own devices, moves to clutch, spins Stan into an arm lock, and draws his gun herself from his hip. She turns them both so she can point it at the oncoming officers down the corridor. "Don't do it! I'm not here to hurt anyone."

She starts to walk them backwards toward the cells. So close, she's _so close_.

"Mara..." There's no-one left to take charge of a situation like this; only a skeleton staff here at all. Laverne is the one leaning out of the dispatch office to try and negotiate.

"I'm not Mara. _Please_!"

"If you're not Mara, let him go," Laverne says, reasonably.

Which _might_ be reasonable, except - Audrey thinks Mara has done too much. She can see it in the eyes of the oncoming officers, who for now are held back by the threat. Maria Gerty and Sam Withers haven't been on the force long; joined as a part of Dwight's push to get more personnel after he took over, and Audrey kind of figures he fudged the expenses to do that given Nathan's constant bemoaning of the budget. The upshot of that is, though, that they don't really know _Audrey_. Not as herself. They were only on board for the Lexie return.

They've also seen the consequences of _not_ taking that shot. They've seen the results of the things Mara created. Maybe Stan won't, Laverne won't, but these new recruits barely know Audrey, and they're afraid enough to kill. No-one is looking to have to figure out how to keep Mara a prisoner, an ever-present, ongoing threat, a tornado in a cage. Best case scenario for everyone here is a clean kill. End of Mara, end of _William_... The Troubles continue forever; but Haven _knows_ the Troubles, by now. They'll take that option.

"You know I can't do that," Audrey tells Laverne, tightly. "I'm sorry, Stan. I'm heading for the cells, and if you know what's good for you, you'll all let me get there. You want Mara locked up. That's what I'm going to do!"

She can see, out of the high-up windows at the end of the corridor, that the light outside is starting to dim into evening. The police station smells of old wood and bad coffee, and the people she knew and worked with are ranged around her, unable to see her for who she is, ready to kill her if she gives her an opening. Blood from her shoulder daubs Stan's shirt, painting the pale blue purplish, almost black.

"Stan, please..." she finds herself saying. He stops struggling against her grip. Laverne is looking at her, too, eyes narrowed and intent. "There's nothing I can _tell_ you to convince you I'm Audrey! Mara knows everything that I know!"

"Give... Give her a chance," Stan says, muffled and his voice slightly choked. "If she's telling the truth, what can it hurt?"

They don't shoot, though the reasons for that could be multiple, and Stan moves, walking back with her toward the cells instead of struggling and opening her up to a bullet from a chanced shot. It even seems like Stan's trying to pose his body to block them more effectively. Audrey feels her breath come quicker-

As they turn the corner into the cells, the officers don't come after them immediately. "I'll lock... the door," Stan breathes. They're within paces of her goal.

If she locks herself in, and throws the gun away, surely that has to be proof enough for them that she's still _alive_ in here.

So, too, is _Mara_. As Audrey starts to loosen her grip on Stan, she feels Mara surge for control. On the threshold of the cell, with the gun in her hand, it's Mara's last opportunity, and she's left it as late as she can, conserving strength for the effort. It's desperate, almost as much so as her seizure of the phone conversation earlier. Fear for Stan gives Audrey strength enough to hold on. The gun is still pointing to his head. She makes herself push her arm out far as it will go and force her fingers open. The gun drops. She staggers back as Mara seethes insults in the back of her mind. She's losing, _losing_... Then Stan's elbow rushes at her face, and she goes down, pain sparking in her head as it strikes the hard floor. She's half inside the cell already, but the keys are in her pocket.

Hitting the ground didn't hurt so much as it should, she realises dimly. It didn't hurt because... because her wounds are _healed_.

Stan doesn't go for the gun but for her, his boot on her shoulder keeping her down, hands dragging at her jacket. He knows she had the keys in her hand when she first approached him.

Audrey helps him hold down Mara for the vital seconds it takes to get the keys out, push the rest of her body through the doorway, and shut and lock the cell.

 _...Hello, dearest_. The voice reverberates in her head, and brings a rush of power and energy to Mara with it. _Sorry it took me so long_.

The door clangs loudly and the turn of the key sings sharply, and Mara rises, flings herself at the bars fiercely enough that Stan jumps backward like he's faced with a caged tiger. Her hands _clang_ louder still on the next impact. Indignation pours through her. She pulls up from her resources what best improvisation she can, outraged at what the damned memory-ghost in her head has done _now_.

"Dwight!" she demands. "I want to see that big lug. William and I are branching into cryptozoology! Go _fetch_ , police dog, bring me your master!"


	9. Chapter 8

NOTE: My beta-reader Miah had some choice words on what should be the fate of William (and Mara) in this fic, which I thought I'd share as some kind of pre-emptive therapy for what lies ahead: " _...See I'm thinking one of those Super Max type prisons where a person is locked up 23 1/2 hours a day and all food and communication is through a tiny slot in the solid metal door, and the 1/2 hour is spent in a small room with a basketball, seeing no one on the trip but the guards (who in their case should wear some kind of full body hazmat suit)..._ "

Now I want to draw William standing looking all morose wearing chains and a prison suit, with his only friend the basketball...

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

"Earth to Nathan," Duke says. "Hey! WMD sitting next to me."

Nathan looks up at him, well and truly snapped out of his thoughts, shaken - a little - by Duke's implications, and bemused that somehow it's okay that Duke just made a joke about it.

"You zoning out on me, here? Don't do that. Stay with us, Nathan."

He _wasn't_ \- he was just wrapped up in his thoughts, and apparently plenty has happened, so he has a lot to think about. Audrey made it to the police station. He's... not a prisoner, not really, and that's more than he expected, that's _weird_ , and he doesn't know what to do with it, this knowledge that if he decided to go, Duke couldn't hold him. The idea that he could walk away doesn't feel like freedom, more like some kind of limbo.

And Mara's barrier is down. It's - He's not sure why, with everything else, he keeps thinking about that. Maybe because the light level has been subtly less ever since the barrier was in place, and it's something so fundamental to living. Still, it's not as if every change in weather doesn't effect the colour of the sky, and that's changing now, too, as the day heads ever nearer to night.

But there seems little point in arguing with Duke, who takes a hand from the wheel to pat his arm as Nathan agrees, "All right."

They're heading for the police station in Duke's truck. Dwight called, and from what Nathan understands, Dwight wasn't at the station yet, but they're all meeting there. Jennifer, squashed next to him in the front passenger seat, keeps shooting shy, encouraging smiles his way, and has a hand tucked around his wrist. That's weird, too, because he thought Jennifer never liked him much, but maybe she was mostly confused by him. He's getting a vibe off both her and Duke like they want to protect him, now. Even though they know what he can do and the last thing he needs is protection. Duke just _called_ _him_ a goddamn WMD.

"How did you do it?" Nathan asks. He can't feel Jennifer's hand, not where its weight rests over his covered wrist, nor where her fingertips nestle in the base of his palm, but he can almost imagine the warmth coming down his shoulder, where her body is leaned. "Albert Hutton. How did you do it, really?"

"I told you, I talked to him, and the wall came down." They _care_. Everything they do is motivated by the fact that they care. "He was locked in like that for so long. He needed someone to talk to him."

Nathan loves Audrey, _loves_ her, and he tried to protect Sophie, tries to protect Haven, but he doesn't think he cares like Duke and Jennifer do. He knows his duty, knows he should be a good man. Knows driven passion - knows it like nothing else. But he thinks that maybe they have something he doesn't, that there's a lack in him that goes deep. Maybe he belongs with Mara and William, after all.

Jennifer broke Mara's power with _words_ and _compassion_.

Nathan barely knows what he's thinking, but it seems to him the barrier's important. "Mara wants Haven isolated. Like she's keeping the whole town captive."

"Yeah," Duke says, patting Nathan's knee before pulling his hands and focus back to driving. "I'm betting she can't do the most of what she wants to do without Haven being cut off from the outside world. Sure, she can run rings around a small town police force, but if the government, the army got involved, she'd be facing a hell of a lot more firepower."

"That's not really what _we_ want, either." Jennifer shudders. "I don't much like the idea of the CIA or someone getting hold of... people who hear voices, and go super-strong and silver-eyed at the touch of blood."

"She won't risk bringing that kind of attention down," Duke says. "Whatever happens, we delayed her big move. You. You did. Right?" He's looking at Nathan for confirmation of Jennifer's deed.

"She'll need a new barrier," Nathan says, not expanding more on that because while he doesn't want to belittle Jen's efforts, he's not so certain it will take Mara long to replace Albert Hutton and his Trouble. Of course, she's in a cell right now. Maybe she's _Audrey_ right now. He hopes that will last. But it feels hard to invest much in hope. He _tries_ and drifts for a moment, dreaming of Mara in a cell, Audrey able to lift Troubles. Can he allow himself to wish that one day they'll both be free of Mara, and they can be normal, together?

He thinks _normal_ was a lost cause a while back, but maybe they can be together.

"Nathan," Duke prompts, an edge to his voice, and Nathan can't be sure what Duke thinks he's going to do, but he sits up straighter and lifts his head anyway, to make Duke happy.

He wonders if Mara's barrier will end up with him, next time. He has forcefields already, after all. He's given to understand that the reason she didn't attach the barrier to him in the first place is because she's pleased with that existing Trouble - and his efficacy with it - and doesn't want to fiddle around with it.

Nathan has to remind himself, _Audrey made it to the police station. Mara is in a cell_. It could all be _over_.

He's numb already. Seems he's numb to the idea it could be over, too. Like he can't rewrite his expectations, his thought patterns about the future: Mara will do _this_ , William will want _this_.

He's _free_.

Limbo hasn't got any walls, it's just grey, it's just waiting.

"How..." He feels like he should say something, tucked between Duke and Jennifer in the front of Duke's truck, and not really knowing anything about what happened to them, personally, after he took off to the island. "How are you? Are you both doing okay?"

Duke turns and gives him such a freaked look, and he's not sure if that's just a product of Nathan Wuornos attempting smalltalk, and an indication he's lousy at it, before Duke turns back to the road and says, "We're good. Generally."

"Other than the part about living in a town under the rule of the Evil Ice Queen, anyway," Jennifer adds, bobbing her head with snark. It's not meant cruelly.

"Mara's not ice," Nathan mumbles. She couldn't be further from it. She's fiery and vicious, and anything she does is from the love of it. Maybe it's no wonder that Nathan always seems to end up burning.

"Okay, wrong cliché," Duke says. "Fucking psycho bitch, though. Come on, Nathan. Whoops-" His neck does a quick _snap_ manoeuvre back to the road, because they're in town, now, and negotiating an intersection. He really shouldn't be taking his attention from the road. He deals with the intersection then resumes: "You're loyal to _Audrey_. You love _Audrey_. Remember?"

"I do," Nathan says. "I love Audrey." They're getting closer now to him seeing her again.

"Nate, you're freaking me out-" Duke's voice dies as they round the corner. The police station is up ahead. The street in front of it is a mess of ambulances, squad cars, and Guard muscle trucks, all blocking the way through. Blue and red lights flickering in the near-dark. "This is-" Duke stops.

Jennifer picks it up fearfully. "It's because they've got Mara, finally, right? _Isn't_ it?"

Nathan's got no more answers than they do, but all the instincts he had as a cop, as the cop who damn _ran_ this place, those instincts are screaming - and there's too much inside his head that isn't _surprised_ , anyway.

* * *

Mara struts back and forth inside the cell and taunts the cops who _stare_ at her. They are ridiculous _children_ , and they don't even know Audrey, which would make things - well, perhaps a fraction disconcerting but certainly more _fun_. She's aware of the uneasiness of the cipher within her, but also of its smug self-satisfaction, because Audrey carried her here and locked her up, stole her aether and her freedom, and no matter what else Mara can do, she cannot materialise herself out through solid bars.

It's the least she could offer in return, to humiliate Audrey in front of her old colleagues. But Stan - dear _Stan_ , it's been such a _long_ time - walked away when she tried to come on to him, and now she's left with the two rookies who are... Well, maybe they're fun in their own way.

Well. William is coming. She won't have to keep herself occupied for long.

She hasn't heard anything more from him after his initial greeting, that loaned her strength enough to take back her _self_. But she presumes he's busy. Most of the police and the Guard aren't here. Even with her in a cell, and she _should_ be the most interesting show in town by far, they're slow at trickling in - a few heads have poked around the door, then disappeared again at her greeting wave or grin, almost like they're embarrassed. Does that means the rest of them are playing with William right now? She'll have to chide him, when she sees him, for hogging all of the cops.

It seems she can still have fun with Audrey hitching a ride in her head, who knew? And when they get _home_ , she has gleefully decided, she intends to design a host of fun scenarios fit to drive Audrey into hiding once and for all. She's getting more of a feel for when the bitch takes over inside her head. They're going to have to lock her up, those times Mara loses control, to prevent Audrey from doing anything so _stupid_ again, and Mara is prepared to suffer a little to see her alter humiliated. Torture? Nothing new to _her_. Audrey's memories should try it. So she doesn't like being in bed with William? Mara will teach her everything William can do, along with a multitude of things he never yet has. She will fuck that bitch _up_. Nathan, for his efforts, gets to watch.

"Hey, _I'm bored_ ," she tells Wilkins. "Where's your _boss_ , the Yeti? I thought he'd be all hot to talk to me."

"He's busy." Wilkins' eyes flicker uneasily. Whatever Dwight is doing, he's not comfortable with it.

"Oh, oh, _oh_!" It hits Mara. "There's not something wrong with _Vince,_ is there? I thought that old bastard looked ready to croak! But wait, wouldn't that be a... a... let me think, what's the word here...? _Conflict of interest_? You know, the Chief of Police running an underground militia? Then again, I suppose they weren't going to ask _Duke_ to do it." She lets her laughter roll, and widens her eyes, mocking. "I suppose, if I hadn't got to him first, him having the tattoo ready and all, they might have asked _Nathan_!"

Mara thinks that's hilarious, but Officer Dibble doesn't get it.

"Shut up," he tells her, shifting on his feet. He casts a somewhat help-me glance at his female colleague, Gerty, over by the door to the cell area.

The sound of screams from elsewhere in the building make Mara jerk her head up and smile.

Withers and Gerty swap uncertain glances. Gerty goes to the door, and looks around the corner, starting to unclip her gun. The sounds of footsteps approaching are still distant when she makes a sort of choked exclamation. Then she makes another sound, rather _more_ choked. Mara's smile widens as something inexplicably splashes through the air, as red drops daub the floor and ceiling, as Gerty's body hits the ground.

Withers has barely started forming the word, "What-?"

"Oh, Officer Dibble, you're so _dumb_ you don't even know you're dead," Mara croons, folding her hands around the bars and leaning forward. Black shapes detach themselves from Gerty's corpse and swarm upward.

William's black spheres aren't bothering to look like anything as they drive through Officer Withers and leave him, too, bloody and falling.

Footsteps ring on the shiny floors, just beyond sight, and William arrives striding and closed-faced. Mara hasn't failed to notice the small scrapes and bruises that formed on her hands, and underneath her clothing, in the last hour... since the larger injuries healed, which were overwhelming everything else before. Their duplicates pattern William's skin. She can see the rips in his clothing. He's blood-spattered from killing and tense with fear and anger.

William is her truest love, but he does lack Nathan's warrior soul. Being forced to fight _irritates_ him so.

"You took your time," Mara observes, and steps back as the aether swarms again and smashes the lock on her cell.

He stares at her, breathing heavily. "I've been running from their tattooed loons half the day."

Mara reaches out and pushes the door back with one hand. " _Nathan_." She rasps the word like a promise as she steps out.

"Later," William answers, his desperation almost as palpable as his viciousness. "We have to go _now_."

"Not _right_ now," Mara corrects. They can spare enough time for her to start the eradication of Audrey Parker right here. William gives a huff of laughter as he catches her intent, though his body language stays skittish.

Officer Withers is still alive, albeit probably not for long, gulping for breath on the floor. Ignoring William's urgency, Mara squats and leans over the dying man. Reaching down, she dips her fingers in the wound, pressing them hard until parted flesh parts further to admit them. The noise he makes is pathetic, so tortured, yet quiet, for he lacks the capacity to scream as the pain deserves. Mara chuckles at him, smiling into the agony on his face. Then she pulls her fingers out and wipes them down her own cheeks. She takes up the gun that he didn't have time to use.

"Did they not tell you that I am death?" she asks as she strokes his shuddering face with the gun, and offers, "You may pray, if you're quick." Then she lifts the gun to his head and, slowly, gently, savouring the moment, squeezes her sticky finger on the trigger.

She closes her eyes and her mouth an instant before the splatter hits her face, then lifts her head and laughs. She throws the gun aside and says, aloud even though she intends it for Audrey- "Do you want control of this body? Then _take it_." She intentionally surrenders, diving back down, pushing the ragged shreds of Audrey up in her stead as she extends to William both her hands.

Audrey wakes to the scent of blood and William's hands clamped tight on her wrists. Black goo-balls hover threateningly on the air all around them. Two Haven PD officers lie dead on the floor, and there's blood and death all over her, clinging to her, worn like a red glove on her right hand.

"Did you really imagine I wouldn't know you came here?" William asks, grin lurid and gloating now that Nathan isn't around and she's unarmed, weakened and helpless in his grip. Mara giggles beneath the surface, staying within a whisper of snatching back control, making sure Audrey _knows_ it. "I wouldn't _follow_ you to get you back? Everything that's happened here is _your fault_ , Detective Parker."

He pulls her around, dragging her so that her feet trip over the body, and she tries not to step on him, but William yanks her so she loses balance and can't not. "My beloved wishes you to see what I did. Who could argue with such a request?" William looks beat up and exhausted, but his voice is smooth silk.

She feels Mara stir and then smirk and settle back down. Audrey can feel more than enough strength is there in Mara to take over, while Audrey's weak and worn from her earlier fight. Mara, devious and cruel, _wants_ Audrey to see this. She slows her down, refuses to allow her to avert her face, trips her and shoves her, making her clumsy. Mara stays below the surface out of spite, and there's nothing Audrey can do. Mara doesn't want her to witness this in mere _memory_. She wants her to see what William has done with her own eyes.

Seeing it shouldn't matter when she knows in abstract that he _did_ it, but it makes a difference, it _does_.

"Come and let me _show_ you!" His tone like a manic kindergarten teacher, William drags her along by the wrists. Whenever Audrey tries to fight him, Mara rears up and squashes her down. Out in the corridor... The place is like a morgue. Immediately she can see three bodies on the floor. The stink of blood is overpowering. There's so much of it.

 _Laverne_... Her brain blanks. She wants oblivion, but Mara won't let her seek that, either. She wonders - if she holds her breath for long enough, can she make herself pass out? She almost feels like she's going to do that anyway.

This is _her fault_. She brought them here. She thought that she could deliver Mara into their control. Do the right thing. Mostly she thought that she could do those things and still keep a slither of a chance back for _herself_.

Wrong, wrong, _wrong_ , says the massacre in front of her. William hauls her, stumbling, over corpses whose names she knows, whose _spouses_ and _children's_ names she knows, down into the bullpen, where more dead await.

She can see Stan's body lying halfway across the room, face-up, dark stains across the front of his shirt. And the thing is – the thing is, she can't see enough from here to be sure. Can't check his pulse or breathing. Can't absolutely ascertain proof of death. So she tells herself it's okay, it's just _her_ blood, from before. It's just hers. Except she knows that it isn't.

Deciding at last that she's seen enough, Mara rears up and swallows her whole.

William looks at her and for a moment uncertainty crosses his expression. Mara realises with amusement that he wonders if he has gone further than she'd have preferred; wonders if these vermin still held any value for her.

Mara shrugs. "I let Nathan live. How much more sentimental am I supposed to _be_?"

* * *

There's a horror painted on Dwight's face the like of which Nathan has never seen. Dwight, the soldier, has always seen worse, and Nathan has never seen him looking so _lost_.

It doesn't improve when he sights Nathan. Caught stark in the flickering lights from the emergency vehicles, his eyes widen with a flash of surprise-panic-anger that darts from Nathan to _Duke_ , and seems like it wants to settle there, except that Dwight doesn't want to leave his eyes too long away from Nathan.

Doesn't help, either, that the other members of the Guard and HPD that are around - all of them _armed_ and _angry beyond reason_ \- start to spot him a moment later, and a murmur goes up, carrying the atmosphere of violence. Nathan walks from Duke's truck with his arms held out and up. He's aware of Duke and Jennifer clinging to each other behind him. Nathan makes a conscious effort to extend the forcefield that responded automatically to the sight of the weaponry to cover them. The last thing he wants is for an ill aimed shot or ricochet to cause that kind of tragedy. Dwight being there doesn't guarantee not being hit. Depending on the shooter's position and the weapon, the bullets will happily go through them to get to Dwight.

Fear thrums through him despite the protection. It's not just the physical threat of the bystanders moving to hem him in a circle of guns. Being the target of hate and fear in mass proportion is terrifying all on its own.

He predicts Dwight's reaction to his first question being _Where's Audrey?_ , and so even though that's the question he most desperately wants to ask, he restricts himself to a tight, "What happened here?"

"Wuornos," growls one of the Guard.

"Hold fire," Dwight orders, in a bitter bark. "The only person you're going to hit is _me_. Even if he didn't have his own protection." He glares at Nathan, who stops and keeps his feet still, and the men around him hold. A number of them exchange guns for knives, or mere fists. "Mara happened," Dwight says eventually. "Mara and William. At least, William was seen with her when she made good her escape."

Nathan goes short of breath; a panic attack of the type he hasn't had since the forcefields were new. Feels like they're shrinking in on him. Feels like they're blocking out all the oxygen he needs. But he's still covering Jennifer and Duke, and he can _see_ that they're fine, so he pushes through. "What... what did they...?"

He looks toward the police station. He sees paramedics bringing out a stretcher, but the body's covered. A dark skinned hand is visible hanging down one side. Dark skin, generously overweight, fingers decorated with a woman's rings...

"Laverne... _No_..." His head spins. This is - it's not possible.

"Oh, _man_. No, no, no..." He glances behind him. Duke has a hand clamped over his mouth, his face as pale as Nathan's ever seen it, Jennifer hangs onto his arm with her own mouth agape, her eyes wide, no attempt on her part to hide her shock and distress.

"How many? Who-?" This was _Nathan's_ station, Nathan's responsibility, first, and even before that - he basically _grew up here_. His single father was a _cop_. He spent hours hanging around those halls. Half the personnel have known him since he was a kid. "What did she _do_?" Audrey was going to put Mara in a cell. How did that go wrong?

Feet crunch on tarmac as someone moves. "You're as much to blame as them. You _protected_ her-" The knife jars out of the Guard man's hand as his lunge encounters the forcefield. Maybe he breaks his wrist. He howls like he does.

"Fuck! Keep off him!" Duke yelps. "You just said it, you genius, he's _Mara and William's fucking protector_ , and you've seen what they can do on their own! And he's here to help!"

That's definitely a piece of creative extrapolation on Duke's part. Nathan didn't come here to... He has no idea, now, why he _is_ here. He needs to be with _them_ , no matter what they did. It's the only way he can save Audrey and ultimately undo his mistakes. But now- "What did they do?" His voice is shaking, _he's_ shaking, he barely trusts himself to speak.

"Everyone that was in the station," Dwight says. "They're gone, Nathan. Cranmer, Withers, Gerty, Alison Treadman - she'd only come in to deliver a _sandwich order_. Conyers. Laverne. Stan. Some kind of projectile. Tore them up, didn't leave any traces like a bullet. Wilkins was shot in the head. I was coming back." Dwight's shaking, too. Nathan can see his anger building, and how enormous and unstoppable it's going to be when all of that shock turns into rage. He feels sick, in that deep, unpleasant psychosomatic way he still can feel sick. "I was told Mara had walked straight into the station and surrendered. I should have _known_ , damn it..."

Nathan can see it overtake him. He thinks it's best if he says nothing at all. Besides, at the moment, he doesn't deserve a defence if he could think of one.

"Damn _you_ ," Dwight hisses. "If you hadn't protected her... It's always got to be about _Audrey_... No, you brought this on us..."

"That's not fair," Duke speaks up. "Mara used him, too."

"I'm sorry," Nathan mumbles. It's not heard past Duke and Dwight shouting at each other. Accusations, condemnations, defences, excuses, all about _him_. He feels like he should be listening better, but he's not. He's looking past Dwight, past the Guard, the shell-shocked cops, the ambulances, to the police station.

He needs to _see_.

He's striding out through their lines, Duke's voice and Jennifer's babbling behind him, variations on: _"Nathan, no!_ " The Guard, the cops, all yell and swear their complaints. It all slides off the forcefield. No-one can really touch Nathan anymore.

Some minutes later, he's sitting on the long line of steps outside the building's main entrance, and barely avoided discovering what happens to vomit inside a forcefield. He didn't need to see after all. Duke and Jennifer are still around, but they're keeping their distance now. Though that could be due to the throwing up.

Nathan's always had a strong stomach, but it's different this time.

Mara and William did that. He knows they're monsters, but maybe it got to be more an abstract knowledge, living with them, his perceptions skewed by knowing that William likes pizza or how Mara likes to walk barefoot on the tiled or stone surfaces of the castle floor.

Duke and Jennifer approach him, steps tentative but their faces determined. They climb the steps and sit down either side of him, the same as they were in the truck. Nathan leans his elbows onto his knees and plants his face in his hands so he doesn't have to look at them.

After a moment, Duke says, "Take the forcefield down, Nathan. The Guard can't shoot, not with Dwight here, and anyone who gets close enough to do anything else, I'll take care of."

It takes a few moments' concentration to do it - he's at the point where he didn't register it being _up_. Oxygen abruptly becomes easier to access. Thought becomes clearer. He straightens, a bit.

"Yeah," Duke observes. "I thought that was a downside of that Trouble. You're not so Mr. Invincible after all." He manages a hint of wry humour. Duke's hand is on Nathan's back. On his other side, Jennifer curls up with her head upon his shoulder and wraps her arm through his elbow and over his bended-up knee.

It's a little alarming. She's so bright and gentle, and he's - not. He wonders if Duke feels that way sometimes, too, with his curse forged of blood and death.

Nathan hears Duke's hand rubbing his back.

"I'm all right," Nathan says. It's a station full of his people who aren't.

 _His_? Where did 'his' come from? They're Dwight's now, and he's Mara's. Mara who is out there again. Maybe she'll always be out there, even if Audrey is back. If Mara can do _this_ , there's no way to contain her.

"You're not," Duke tells him, that way Duke has of deciding he knows your mood better than you do, that's always annoyed Nathan, his voice a song of exasperation. "But it isn't too late, Nathan. You can come back. She didn't do anything to you that you can't come back from, but you've got to _believe_ that, if you _believe_ that... Stay with us, this time."

"Stay," echoes Jennifer. "We know she hurts you, too."

Nathan wonders what they know.

"I can't." His powers don't work on them. He can't fight them from a _distance_. He has to be up close to take Mara and William down. "I need to go back to her."

Duke's really quiet a moment. Both of them, so quiet and so still. "Are you-" Duke pauses, the words seeming to strangle in his throat "-her conscience?"

Nathan doesn't think that's a position he can claim. "I hold them back," he settles for. He told Duke that much before.

" _This_ -" Duke struggles, but can't find a way to name it. "It wouldn't have happened if you were here?"

Nathan does believe that.

Duke makes a muffled noise.

"It's not _your_ fault," Nathan snaps, uncurling and turning, even as Jennifer moves to go to Duke instead of him. "You were just, just trying to help! I don't really know if they're... _less_... around me." But they haven't deliberately committed mass murder for shits and giggles in front of him either, since the void. Though he can't say they haven't created Troubles that could do it second-hand, out of his sight.

Nathan rests his hand between Duke's bowed shoulders, perhaps echoing what Duke did for him minutes ago, toying with the ends of hair he can't feel, situation reversed. He realises he didn't tell Duke the whole story, a minute ago. "I need to go back if I'm going to stop them."

Duke raises his head.

"I can't do it from here."

"What will you do?" Duke asks, quietly.

"I don't know." He hasn't had chance to think about that part yet. "Something."

Duke's hand clamps around his, covering the heel of the palm and lower wrist. Nathan takes in the telltale signs of the tightness of the grip. "Don't go. She has no _power_ without you."

But it sounds like a prepared line, rehearsed, and after this, Nathan can't see how anyone can seriously argue that. Duke knows it too, hanging his head again. He corrects himself. "She'll destroy you."

Impossible to argue the ring of truth in that.

Nathan sits and thinks about Audrey, and the possibility of not going back.

* * *

Duke has... has freakin' _whiplash_ from how fast this situation screwed up. He's been covertly watching them remove the bodies from the police station, to take them across to the morgue. The only part of this that's still salvageable is Nathan, sitting next to him and not running, _not_ heading back to Mara despite his expressed desire to do so, even though nobody is now keeping him here. Nobody now could.

Duke started all this out of some misbegotten desire to save Nathan. Who is trying to dissuade him of the fact, but Duke doesn't see how this is not _his fault_.

They've played variations on this game before, it's just a brand new angle. Nathan wants to save _Audrey_ , Duke wants to save _Nathan_ , and the whole of Haven gets screwed in the process.

Dwight is walking back across the street to them. Dwight looks like a thundercloud, ready to explode. God of Thunder, only needs the hammer, and Duke's willing to lay money on it that he's out to smite something now. He turns back, mid-argument with a couple of guys from the Guard, and Duke hears, "He'll do what he wants. I can't restrain him. _You_ can't restrain him." He sounds pissed off as hell about that. When he marches up, it's to continue that general thread with the demand, "Nathan, are you going to help?"

Nathan's thin shoulders adjust like a bag of rocks as he rolls to move upright. There are a few crunches. He says, "Yes," but Duke suspects he's probably not thinking in the same way Dwight is thinking, and knows he's perfectly capable of being a passive-aggressive smartass.

"You sure about that, because the reports I have from this morning suggest that would be quite the U-turn. You made a few new corpses of your own." Dwight speaks with barely-buried rage, his general's objectivity a memory.

" _Shit_ , Dwight," Duke groans, because Nathan's colour wasn't great before, and it's nearly nonexistent now. "They dropped a _building_ on him. They sure as fuck weren't fighting with safety-wheels on." Nathan doesn't have perfect control and every time Duke thinks back to that battle, more and more, he thinks Nathan was fighting defensively. Those fucking forcefields - they could be used as _more_ of an attack weapon than that, and Duke knows pretty well that when you're fighting for your life against people who are trying to _kill_ you, you strike out.

"They killed Laverne. They killed Stan." Nathan chooses to ignore the accusation and opts not to chime in on his own defence. Still hedging, Duke notes.

Still, he thinks Dwight's swallowing more just standing here talking to Nathan. _Dwight_ would rather that Nathan was tied up and drugged up, out of the way in that remote cabin. But he's not. The walking powerhouse is back in their midst, and since nobody can _make_ him do anything, in the sense that everyone but Duke and Jen are absolutely freaking-out shit-scared of him, and Duke's not even sure about the exception... Soft steps and diplomatic words - or words as diplomatic as possible under the circumstances - are about the only sane recourse.

"We're going after them," Dwight says. There's white around his eyes, red veins inside them, and puffy pink discolouration outside that Duke can just about make out in the spotlights and flashing emergency lights illuminating the night. "Chances are they're not seafarers enough to put out back for the island before dawn starts to provide some more light. They're holed up somewhere in town or on the coast. Please, if you've only been acting so far for all the reasons you said, fight _for_ _us_ , Nathan."

They can't stop him going. They can't stop him interfering. They can't stop him flattening the whole party if he feels like it. Duke's gut churns. Nathan stands up. "You can't go after them like this. More people are going to die."

Dwight gives him a long look. "You can help with that."

This time Nathan doesn't say anything at all, not even about Audrey, which is more diplomatic than Duke would have credited him capable of anymore, but he can't say he doesn't appreciate it. A lot.

Dwight says, "Then you're with me," and reaches out and grips Nathan's shoulder. "You can do this."

Dwight's such a practical guy. He's angry, angry, _angry_ , and some of that's with Nathan and his dumb-ass choices. But he's not going to let that lose him a resource, or worse, turn one against him. Sweet-talking doesn't work against Nathan at the best of times and right now Duke figures that Nate can't not know where Dwight's at.

"That means you're coming, too," Dwight says darkly to Duke. The sweep of his gaze covers Jen almost incidentally. Duke figures Nathan isn't the only one in the shit.

"Yeah, yeah, fine." He sighs. Of course, Dwight wants him, _them_ , there to watch Nathan.

"No guns, no bullets, in my crew," Dwight reminds them. It's another reason, probably, why Dwight's putting Nathan with him, since there's fuck all point people taking pot-shots around the forcefield anyway, but hell, why not have the reminder?

Dwight stalks off to get ready and shouts around more orders, the set of his back a mass of tension. Duke isn't completely surprised when the big guy engineers things a few minutes later to come catch him alone. Jen's still watching Nathan, and... Duke doesn't even know what that's about; she seems to have latched onto the sexual assault thing in a weird way since the island. Started talking nineteen to the dozen, one evening, about the time she wrote a series of articles about it, that included rape statistics for men, how guys don't report it. It's probably just as well Nathan doesn't have a clue how much they know.

Dwight says to Duke in a low, dangerous voice, "We're going to find them and we're going to _kill_ them, and that's the end. If you need to put Nathan down hard, remember that the forcefields don't work properly close to William and Mara."

So someone else noticed that in the crazy-ass battle, enough to report it to Dwight.

Duke has to ask himself, _does_ Nathan hold William and Mara back? He'd seen Nathan with them on the island and figured it impossible. Yet what they've done after Nathan was taken from them far outstrips anything they did while he was their major weapon. Duke is starting to think that a weapon of epic proportions with a conscience is far better placed in the hands of a psychopath than a depleted arsenal lacking any restraint. Nathan, at least, is never _not_ going to be the weapon that talks back.

Duke can't make Nathan's choices for him and he can't fix this. But it's going to break his heart if it turns out Nathan had the right idea all along.

Hours later, they haven't found Mara yet, though the Guard have killed a lot of bushes. Nathan moves like a machine at his side, and Jennifer gets stuck with driving Dwight's truck through the night-time forest track - which it turns out she has a knack for; who knew? Reports say Mara and William were spotted coming up this way. That they're close.

Duke looks across again and sees Nathan's face, blank like a wall, limned by moonlight, and hasn't the faintest idea how this is all going to fall out when they find them.

* * *

Mara has slept in trees before; climbed up them in a gown _much_ less practical than she is wearing now, that provided room aplenty for spiders to make homes in its folds as well as her back-then longer hair. William grumbles, but he's slept in far worse places. Audrey has also slept in a tree before, on a stakeout, but is silent, a small, wrecked core of desolation inside Mara's head. Which feels decidedly uncomfortable, and less satisfying than she was expecting. But hours into the search, into the night, Audrey has yet to show any signs of wanting to take back control, so maybe Mara's methods _have_ got rid of her parasite problem for the time being.

Around three in the morning, William falls asleep and maybe she does, too, despite everything. She blinks her eyes open to the echo of distant noise.

She's pretty sure she's Mara when she wakes, but HPD voices slide into her awareness, familiar voices she can put names to, and her stomach does a somersault and she almost loses balance on her supporting branches.

" _Oh_." Audrey quashes the sound to a whimper, staring up at a snoring William tied by his jacket sleeves slightly above her in the tree, hands and arms huddled up against the cold. His mouth is open and his face oddly slack. Like that, he doesn't look like a monster, just kind of goofy and cute, like he was at the beginning.

The purely physical cold of the night isn't a match for the cold inside her as Audrey remembers what he did. There's still a gun in her belt. She draws it quietly, such careful, silent movements. She has it to his head before she remembers that firing this shot kills both of them.

It doesn't matter. The only difference is the pause and preparing herself to say her final farewells to the world. She wonders if, whatever spiritual beliefs prove true, _Audrey Parker_ gets any sort of hereafter, or if that's only a privilege that goes to the real Audrey, the real Mara. If she only fades to nothing, like she never existed at all.

Did she exist?

She tries to pull the trigger and discovers she can't. It's not Mara - at least, not consciously; Mara's slipped low and she can't feel that internal struggle right now. It's-

William. She can't bring herself to kill _William_. Not even when she reminds herself of all the things that he's done.

She tries again, turning the gun on herself. But her hand judders, self destruction doesn't come easy. Mara has no reason to die.

Or Audrey's just a coward.

With a grunt and a jerk, William awakens, his eyes suddenly open and staring at her with a gun pointed at herself. He chokes and snatches for it, shouting a desperate negation. Audrey rolls sideways and lets herself fall out of the tree.

Thick undergrowth catches her. Scratches assail her bare skin, unknown things tug at her as she moves. William hisses, "No. _No_! Come back! Mara!"

He's keeping his voice low because the searchers can still be heard, beating through the woods in the distance. They're armed with guns and fury and can only be coming to kill them.

Audrey thinks of the bodies in the police station. There's nothing _left_ but this, and if she can't do it, someone else can do the honours. There will be no shortage of people burning to do her that service, out there in the darkness.

"No! No, they'll kill you!" Panic in William's voice and she hears him crash down out of the tree to follow as she starts running headlong through the undergrowth towards the searchers.

She'll save Nathan. Save _Haven_. There's nothing she can do about the Troubles already out there, but at least if she takes William and Mara out of the equation, everyone has a _chance_.

Sacrificing herself to the Barn for twenty-seven Trouble-free years was a more satisfying way to go.

Mara declared herself to be death, but Audrey will see that promise out.

She's such a straight line of purpose it even takes a moment to register the particular familiarity of two of the voices, out there in the woods-

"You awake, Nathan? C'mon, man, _focus_. Tell me you're still in the game." And after a pause, "I want to hear _words_ , man."

"-fine-" comes the reluctant reply a moment later. Audrey's breath catches and her heart _thuds_ painfully. _Nathan_ , that was Nathan...! He sounds distant, further away than Duke as they cover separate search paths through the woods, and oddly preoccupied, but he adds an edge of impatience to, "Look out for yourself, Duke."

Nathan won't help her, he'll _stop_ her. The thought slices into Audrey, and she adapts her first instinct to run towards his voice, heads instead for Duke, _Duke,_ of all the people she could have hoped to see right now, and rekindled hope of a different kind rises in her.

There was something she thought of, back in the cell, back when hope seemed available in much more abundance, where she entertained and allowed herself to think in terms of positive solutions. Maybe she can do more than just _die_ to save them, after all.

"Who is that? Is someone there?" Duke's shadow is all she can see through the trees. To her right, a flashlight beam bounces, missing her, but making it harder to pick out the details of where she's headed. "Goddamn it, I'm probably talking to moose."

"Duke! Over here!" calls Nathan, and Audrey hears his trail of noise through the undergrowth diverge behind her, heading back toward where William is coming on her tail. William is moving slower than she despite his desperate concern because _he's_ already been hunted up and down Haven's coastline by the Guard for most of the afternoon.

"Nathan!" Duke yelps, and also starts wading through the undergrowth in that direction. Audrey presses herself behind a tree as the flashlight beam bears around again. Other bouncing flashlight beams trailing noise and voices materialise out of the dark woods, taking off after Nathan, drawn more by Duke's concern than Nathan's initial shout. There's at least one vehicle in there somewhere, engine rumbling in the dark.

Maybe they'll shoot William _for_ her. But this - she'll do this _first_ , if she can.

She doesn't know what Nathan's doing here, among them. How they could possibly trust and accept him, how he could have been persuaded to _stay_. But she can't think about that, except that maybe it's a sign of hope for him after all.

When Duke comes level with the tree she's hiding behind, she reaches out and catches his hand - the one with the gun in it. She's not intending to fight Duke but she can't let him shoot her yet, either. "Duke." His right arm comes around to brain her with the flashlight, and her free hand shoots out to muffle his cry. She tries to duck her head from the blow. She would rather take the hit than risk drawing Nathan. " _Duke_!"

"-Mara-" he mumbles under her hand, eyes going wide, flashlight perfectly poised to catch both their faces in its beam where he stalled it on their air; the blow still waiting to fall.

"No," Audrey says, keeping her voice quiet and urgent. "No, it's not Mara."

His eyes seem to go impossibly wide, and they search her, and he... _sees_ , she thinks. He knew who she was when she was pretending to be Lexie, knew Mara was coming back when she re-Troubled him before, and he sees her now. She risks taking her hand from his mouth and her name is a drawn-out gasp on his lips. "Audrey-?"

"Yes!"

"...Nathan... Nathan wasn't..." He shakes his head, dismissing what he'd been about to say. From somewhere behind her, there's starting to be a lot of noise. William. Nathan. The Guard. But she can't think about that.

They step closer together, and suddenly Duke just slings his arms around her shoulders and holds her tightly, muffling his words in her shoulder. "I thought you were _gone_."

"So did I, for a while." But this isn't a reunion. "Duke. _Duke_." She clings to him, but she transfers her grip so she can step back to where she can _see_ him. They might not have much time. "I need something from you. I need to... to fix your Trouble."

" _What_? Mara fixed it - at least I think so, and - Do you know what she _did_? You turned evil for weeks and Nathan charged down that slippery slope right after, and now... _this_ is the thing that you come to me and say?"

"It's important," Audrey tells him. "It's really, really important. I've been thinking about this. The way I changed your Trouble, before. I didn't _mean_ to, almost killed you." She tightens her fingers on his arms. "Sorry about that."

"A lot's happened since then." He looks beyond her, agitation animating his frame. "Audrey, we need to go after Nathan and the rest. If they kill William..."

"It's okay." If they kill him, she'll die, and that's okay. There's just one thing she wants to do first. "I don't want Nathan to see me. Just you."

"They fucked him up," Duke says, grimly, agreeing.

She sobs a little laugh. It's the most hopeless sound. But somehow Duke knows, and that's good. Nathan will need his help, when it's all over, to get through what's happened, to survive. And she wants him to survive, if she can't. "I know what to do now... with your Trouble. Mara's skills, her memories... I can make it so just the blood would be enough. No more killing, Duke. No more killing the Troubled, ever. You could save Haven. But I need to do it now, while I'm strong and Mara's quiet."

He puts the flashlight beam full on her face and leaves her blinking, and she supposes she's earned the intense, cynical scrutiny he gives her, searching again for Mara, and a trick. Doubting the instincts that told him she was Audrey. Doubting how well he knows her.

Then he lowers the flashlight and puts the gun away in a pocket, and yanks the layers of his jacket, shirt and T-shirt aside from his breast in one quick movement, exposing the shifting handprint mark already there. "You do this," he breathes, still sounding scared. "Just don't screw it up this time, okay?"

"...I'll try." She is grateful beyond measure for his faith in her. She doesn't deserve it. Where did it come from? His, Nathan's... How could she inspire them so when she was always Mara underneath?

And that's not a concern that's over yet. "I want your gun back in your hand," she says, pulling at him. "When I do this, I might turn back into Mara. Making Troubles is her domain, not mine. Please, Duke, please, if she shows, _kill Mara_. One more death for Haven..." Two, including William. "Please do that for me. She won't let you live with a Trouble like this, and I couldn't bear it if she killed you, or _worse_ , and I had to come back to memories of doing that."

Duke draws a harsh breath.

"Look after Nathan." She can't see his eyes in the dark, only shadows, but she meets them anyway as she pleads with him for this last, _last_ favour. "Make him learn to live and love without me. He _listens_ to you. Please. I have to go, but I need to know he'll continue..."

Duke makes a choked noise and mumbles, "He listens to me sometimes. But, yeah, you know I'd do that."

Audrey curls her hands in the loose front of his clothes. "And _you_ live, Duke. Have children, and be happy. You... carry this curse on, you hear me? You and Jennifer. Your family can fix the strays that are left. This... this way we can fix the Troubles for good, all of us together, and all of this means something _real_. Nathan paved the route by bringing me back. I learned enough from Mara to make this change. You and Jennifer... You bring me a future where the Troubles are _gone_."

She searches again for his eyes and with a bob of the flashlight, this time she finds them. She sees the glitter of moisture there... Her plan laid out, and she can see he understands her logic, how determined she is to make it happen.

"Do it," he whispers, and like once before, willingly bows his head and bares his chest to let her lay her palm upon him. She checks to make sure there is a gun in his hand.

Mara took more aether from William, but she doesn't need it for this. Not to reach in and reshuffle, adjust, rearrange. The void-stuff of the aether wriggles into a new shape for her as if eager to do so.

She feels Mara surge inside her, so indignant and offended by this act that Audrey can't hold her off, can only throw herself back from Duke, staggering over the obstacles of the busy woodland floor, stumbling, falling.

Mara twists and scrambles to her feet, snarling curses. She looks up at the _click_.

Looks up into Duke Crocker's gun, then a flashlight beam that blinds her.

His face in that flash was drawn and twisted, tortured and more. His shirt was askew and the handprint on his chest glowed differently than ever it has before, with the distinctive characteristics of someone _else's_ interference. Mara doesn't need to scramble through her recent memories for what that bitch _did_.

More, she asked him to kill her. Now he's holding a gun in her face.

But the moment extends, and extends, and nothing. Mara draws in breath, and lets it out as laughter, at first weak and shaky, but by increments it turns louder, raucous and real. "You can't do it!" she jeers, delighted, as she steps backward. Like Nathan before him, he can't put the final nails in Audrey Parker's coffin when it comes to the crunch, even when she's a willing sacrifice.

"I'm sorry..." he whispers.

She laughs in his face and turns to flee. "I won't let you destroy all of my gifts!" She leaves a promise, voice shrill and coarse on the air: "I'll be back for _you_ , Duke!"

She thinks he might yet pull the trigger - she keeps herself moving - but still he doesn't shoot.

- _William_ \- The concern inserts itself unpleasantly into Mara's consciousness. He's protected, but he's tired, and it seems Nathan has gone turncoat again.

She dismisses Duke from her thoughts as a problem to deal with _later_ , and she chases off into the night.

* * *

Nathan feels more removed from what they're doing than his original Trouble would ever justify. It's a bunch of rage-fuelled townsfolk and cops going up against Mara and William, and their Troubles, those of them who have Troubles, won't help them... just like Nathan's won't.

Then again, he understands why, after the police station, they have to do _something_. But Dwight's supposed to be the strategist. Nathan doesn't know what he's thinking, or if he _is_ thinking.

They were Dwight's people, and not Nathan's any more. It happened on Dwight's watch. Nathan can't imagine how he would feel if it had happened on _his_.

Tiredness or pain can't hold his steps. He doesn't know if being here can prevent another massacre. Mostly so far it's just making people nervous, and he appreciates Dwight assigning him to this party, where he doesn't have to always focus on keeping a forcefield raised against his allies' bullets.

Nathan _senses_ William before he sees or hears him, and that creeps him the fuck out. It's like the presence of the other man slides into place at the back of his mind and it's familiar, it's _known_ , it _belongs_ there, and what the _hell_ did Mara and William do to him in that bed?

It comes with an unwillingness to reveal him to the searchers, but Nathan's memory of Laverne and Stan dead in the police station is stronger. There are too many other people here he gives a damn about. Duke, Jennifer, Dwight... He's not going to watch another massacre, and he almost chokes on the reluctant words, " _Duke_! Over here!" as he starts running toward William's presence.

He hears Duke shout onward, and others pick up and start following him.

Nathan doesn't know if he can take William. He's not sure if he can so much as _raise a hand_ against William, for certain, and none of his Troubles are such that they'll work directly. Even in a physical fight, a punch from William will hurt. But William won't _kill_ him, and that can't be said about anyone else here trying to take the bastard on. So Nathan increases his pace, feet battering the ground, pushing a forcefield through the undergrowth ahead of him to clear a path for his wild sprint. The speed won't buy him a lot of time to try and get this done before the bystanders show up.

Nathan's not great in the dark, but the forcefields help him keep from tripping over everything but the most solid of obstacles. Trees cast bulky enough shadows to avoid, but he's moving fast and can't see very far ahead of him. That sense of _presence_ calling to his soul is converging with a concentration of sound and movement ahead-

He feels his forcefield collapse the instant before he all but runs straight into William.

"Nathan! I thought that was you!" William gasps. He breathes in agonised gulps, but launches straight into words. "Mara... _Audrey_! We have to find her! She-"

Nathan damns the hesitation that cost him his momentum and launches off again, charging into William and knocking him flat before he can finish.

"You bastard...!" He lashes out with hands that can feel when they connect. Scores William's cheekbone with a short, fierce punch. "The police station! You think I don't know your work?! Wouldn't see it?!"

William growls at him and does something Nathan doesn't feel, out of sight in the dark. He thinks perhaps he just got kneed in the balls. Then William digs his fingers into his wrist, hard enough to make him feel the flare of pain from the cuts there, then make his hand go... well, numb. All pins and needles, at least, and he can still feel that while William's holding it. "Mara!" William yells in his face. " _Audrey_! She's out there. She's out there and she wants them to kill her!"

" _What_?"

"I said _get off of me_ , idiot! Mara needs our help!" William comes damned close to throwing him off, relinquishing his wrist in the process, and panic sets in. Nathan can hear others approaching behind, Dwight's voice among them. Can see the sweep of headlights that signals the arrival of the truck Jennifer's driving, which had to come a different way around to negotiate the trees. He's lost track of Duke, but he must be somewhere, in amongst the confusion. What Nathan _cannot_ do is let William loose among all these people, when he's already in a killer mood today. _Damn it..._! Could Nathan even spot those black balls of crap, flying free ready to do something else terrible, in the dark? Nathan grabs William's arms and hauls them over his head, pins him down by them. "Fuck you, William! You're not killing anyone else today!"

"You're such a goody-two-shoes," William growls. Something makes Nathan look down, to discover William's pushing up his crotch, grinding against Nathan where he's straddling him. "You sanctimonious prick." He breaks the grip on his arms, and squirms, upsetting Nathan's balance. In a fast move, he grabs the back of Nathan's neck and pulls his head down, pressing their lips together. "You _prick_. Nathan, Nathan, _Nathan_..." He chants in a mumble, tongue moving inside Nathan's lips, trying to invoke all the unwanted ties he and Mara wrapped around Nathan yesterday, as Nathan struggles but can't get loose, and his body begs surrender. He hears an exclamation from someone in the oncoming Guard and HPD search party, hears Dwight curse, and his face burns. With William holding him so close and tight, he even feels the heat. He almost imagines he can feel it go straight down to his groin.

He bites William's tongue and uses a forcefield to scrape the ground around him, tearing up dirt and vegetable matter and propelling it all across the backs of his shoulders into William's face, as the forcefield predictably gives out under his immunity, but the regular matter keeps its momentum. He uses another forcefield to smash up a tree at the side of them, showering them with debris that manages to hit William about as much as it does himself.

Nathan doesn't take the chance to pull back from the kiss. He clamps a hand on the back of William's neck, his turn to keep him there now, and scrapes his free hand over the ground next to him. The _make_ Trouble spits out a reluctant batch of sharp-edged iron caltrops. He hopes it does, anyway. It's too dark to see if it worked, and he can't feel them.

This time, he uses his grip on William's neck to help him pull back from the kiss. Then he jerks his head forward again, slamming his forehead into William's mouth. He feels teeth slice his skin, which is distracting, but he's pretty sure William is hurting more.

-Mara's going to _kill him_ -

William's hurting more still when Nathan clamps a hand around his shoulders and throws a knee around his legs and _rolls_ them both in a full circle, slamming William's back on the collection of sharp metal shapes.

Which apparently _are_ there, from the way William howls.

" _Bastard_ ," Nathan hisses into William's face, close enough to kiss him again, and there's a pull to do just that, but he loathes himself for it enough to resist.

People are around them, waving tasers, and Dwight's voice asks, "Nathan?" uncertainly, but it sounds far away. A taser goes into William's side, jolting his body on the caltrops and making him gurgle. Someone jabs a taser into Nathan, somewhere, and the world short-circuits a moment, but on the other side of it someone's being yelled at by Dwight. Nathan lifts his head and can see the headlights of the parked truck, and Jennifer in her dress too thin for the night's temperatures glowing in the haze, with her arms wrapped around herself, but he can't see Duke anywhere.

William's still underneath him. His hand reaches up to paw Nathan's face. "You're still _mine_ ," he whispers harshly, just loud enough for Nathan to catch. "She _gave_ you to me. You think you can _escape_ -? _Urk_!"

Someone shocks him again, which Nathan appreciates. He scrabbles through William's clothes, looking for the box; the black goo-balls. "There's a...a _weapon_ ," he grates, trying to make himself heard by Dwight and the search party above the other noises. "A box. Those black spheres. We have to find it." He can't conduct a fucking body search in the _fucking dark_ without a sense of touch. Even the flashlight beams just throw shadows where his hands go. His fingers light up with life where they come into contact with William's skin, but that doesn't necessarily help him. "Dwight-"

He tries to move aside enough for Dwight to shove in and search, without getting so far from William he can't grab him again if there's any sign of his deadly weapons emerging.

"Mara," William mumbles. "Save her..."

"Worry about yourself," Dwight growls. "Kill one, kill both, check?"

Dwight has a _knife_.

Nathan sees the glint of it in the beams of flashlights and headlights. Jennifer gives a high cry of startled horror, but most of the other noises from the crowd around them are of approval. Nathan still doesn't know _where_ Duke is, because if he were here he'd be _stopping them_. As it is, Nathan's the only one here who can stop this. He grabs for the wrist of Dwight's hand that holds the knife and pushes his own body in the way, straddling William again, albeit for protection this time.

"...Knew you cared..." William mutters, and groans because he's being mashed against the sharp edges underneath him again.

Dwight curses and says, "Where the _fuck_ is Duke? Nathan, get _off_ , damn you. They need to die. They need to die _now_."

Other people are moving in. Nathan's forcefield stutters and fails because he's too close to William. He gets tased again. Probably a more than once, but he can't tell. It's a wonder he doesn't get knifed. When he can think again, he's being pulled off William by many hands and Dwight is raising the knife again. He kicks out, but misses. A forcefield is too weak to push Dwight's arm back, when it has to get so close to William to do it. And Nathan _is_ going to get a knife in him, unless he looks to himself. Perhaps not by HPD, they know he wasn't there for the massacre, know _him_ , but some of the people holding him are Guard.

They rebound abruptly off a tight three-hundred-sixty degree forcefield, but that leaves Nathan in a heap on the ground, and Dwight is still poised over William.

Then Nathan finally sees them - clouds of darkness resolving from the shadows, moving toward Dwight like swarms of angry bees, melding together in clumps and turning the shapes of arrows on the way.

Jennifer screams, "DWIGHT!"

Nathan uses a forcefield to provide the momentum. The only thing he has to throw is himself. The impact of his body knocks Dwight sideways off William before the knife blow lands, before the goo-balls strike. Nathan has no _idea_ if his forcefields are proof against William's creations, but his body's plastered over Dwight's and in the way, and William desperately dispels the cloud of hovering death.

"Get up, get away from him," Nathan begs, pulling at Dwight, who is not going to be fucking moved by Nathan this time unless Dwight _wants_ to be, apparently. At least if they're away from William, he can use the forcefields. His voice sounds thin and ineffectual as he raises it to shout. "Everyone to me! That stuff's still out there, waiting in the shadows to kill."

Of course, if he puts a forcefield around everyone, he can't protect himself from the people inside it.

" _Nathan_!" a voice of fury rises out of the trees as someone runs, oncoming fast. " _Forcefields UP_. _NOW_!"

He looks in time to see Mara slap her hand into a Guard man's face, and then the world _explodes_.

Forcefields can't cover William. Jennifer's on the other side of him. Nathan lunges _toward_ Mara and tries like hell to throw the largest wall he can up between all of them and her and whatever she just unleashed. It's almost like the clouds have come down to ground level, and there's grey billowing _everywhere_ , but it stops at Nathan's forcefield like its encountering a pane of glass.

William drags himself upright while everyone else is ducking. Nathan sees him tase Dwight and kick him while he's down, but the goo-balls have clumped together to form William's henchmen, who help to keep him on his feet as he swears and kicks and lurches.

The grey clouds subside enough to see the trees complete their last moments of collapse, just crumbling vertically in place where they stood. Beyond Nathan's forcefield now lies an area of the woods maybe sixty feet across that's completely bare, empty ground covered by a sediment layer of white-grey that reflects the meagre light there is to almost glow. Mara and the grey man-shape with her hand over its face are the only things still standing. The only _living_ one is Mara.

Mara has her other hand over her mouth. When she takes it away, her lips are bloody. "We're going _home_." She spits blood and ashes when she speaks. The corpse of the man she just Troubled finishes crumbling to dust when she takes her hand back. "None of _you_ are going to stop us. _Nathan_..."

She holds out her arm, imperiously.

" _No_ ," Duke says, and Nathan isn't sure how or when he got there, but he's at Nathan's side and gripping his arm like a vise. "You don't get him, you bitch."

William's at Mara's side, now, both of them looking the worse for wear. She's going to be so _angry_ , thinks Nathan, thinking of wounds on her mouth and on her back, inflicted by his hand. The henchmen take positions of protection slightly in front of them, although of course, this time no-one can fire a gun.

Mara looks directly at Nathan. "You can't even _imagine_ what we're going to do to her if you aren't there to stop us."

"What's she talking about?" Dwight chokes, with difficulty.

"Audrey," says Duke, his breath sounding almost as constricted, and _he_ hasn't just been tasered and kicked. "I saw _Audrey_."

Duke saw-? Nathan looks at him, but there's no time to ask, no time to process.

"Nathan!" Mara crooks her finger, moving it through the air where dust still hovers that might've been trees, might've been a man. "I expect you to _follow_."

"He's not your dog," Duke says.

"I beg to differ." Her eyes sweep the remainder of the party nastily. "The rest of you feel free to follow, too... if you feel tired of your pathetic lives."

Someone tries to shoot her - Guard or HPD, Nathan isn't sure - and Dwight grunts as the bullet impacts. Mara laughs. A few people lunge forward with tasers or even just bare fists, and the henchmen don't hold back from snapping bones.

Mara and William behind them are turning to go.

" _Stop them_ ," Dwight grunts, and Nathan realises he's saying it to _him_.

"I can't-" His voice vanishes. He tries to rally. Duke's hand slaps his shoulder or back, somewhere, but he only hears it, sounding so very far away. He's thinking... He's _useless_ here. It's no more than he's said all along, but now it's tested truth.

He can't _do_ it this way.

* * *

When they go, it's like Nathan's limbs turn to liquid and he flops, before Duke can make a grab for him. He heaves for breath on his knees and his shoulders shake. Duke puts a hand on him, on his shaking shoulders, and upon discovering he _can_ , thinks that it isn't a good sign.

"Breathe, man, _breathe_!" It comes out shot through with alarm.

"Thought they were going to kill everyone," Nathan mumbles to the ground. Duke only just catches the blurred words.

"Yeah, well they didn't." Duke fists his hand between Nathan's shoulder blades. "We're still here." He's kind of amazed that Nathan's still here. They just watched Nathan defy William and Mara. It's proof of what Nathan claimed all along, but all any of them have seen is him playing at being her shadow, stuck to her side, doggedly defending her. "Are you all right?" He puts his efforts into trying to get Nathan back on his feet.

Dwight isn't looking good either, but there are a bunch of people to help him, whereas Duke wouldn't trust anyone else here to touch Nathan except Jennifer, even if they weren't still too terrified to lay a hand on him.

"I have to go," Nathan groans as his head comes up. He rolls it back, staring at the sky. There's just enough grey light beginning to crack the horizon now to see his face, grainy in the gloom. That grey complexion might not be entirely down to dust and the pre-dawn light. "They have Audrey. I have to go back."

Duke's body feels bathed in chills. He did not think of that when Audrey presented her plan to him. Mara's final words make his stomach roll.

"You don't have to go back," he asserts, but the words feel stale, drained and used up.

"I can't _fight them_ from here. Duke, please." Nathan begs him with his hoarse, cracked voice. "Let me go back. On the island, I'll - I have ideas. I'll stop them, somehow." Nathan's unsteady on his feet, knees trying to fold. Duke grabs him under the arms to keep him up. Duke thinks about what Dwight said before, and he could stop Nathan _now_ , test his newly refurbished Trouble to make Nathan a normal man and take all of this from his shoulders.

But he can't.

The only reason Nathan's not running, powering after Mara and William like he has every other time, and resisting a bunch of people who honestly couldn't keep him there if he decided to go... It's because Duke told him he could stay, and be safe. Convinced him there was still a place for him. Duke reaches an unpleasant realisation. Nathan's asking for _permission_ , and on one level it's plain ridiculous and on another it's _heartbreaking_. He's terrified to go back, now he's had this glimpse of other possibilities, let out from Mara's influence long enough to breathe. Duke can stop this; he can keep Nathan here with a few words, and right now Nathan will _let him_.

As his eyes sting and liquid blurs the face in front of him, looking so earnestly back, Duke clamps his hands on Nathan's arms above the elbows and leans in, close enough he can feel Nathan's puffed breaths on his face. Nathan chokes brokenly. "Audrey wants to die, William said. I have to stop them hurting her even worse."

 _Goddamn it_ , thinks Duke. _I could have ended this_... It could all be _over_ if he'd been able to shoot Mara. Nathan probably wouldn't be talking to him, but they'd all be safe, _Nathan_ would be safe. It's just some fucked up irony that he tried to save them both, and in so doing, saves neither.

Once he had Nathan safe, he'd never had any intention of letting him go again.

But the police station was too much, _all_ of this is too much, and Nathan... Maybe his plans will work, maybe they won't. Duke believes him when he says he means to try. But even aside from that, it seems the only thing to put any kind of a limit on the excesses of William and Mara may well _be_ Nathan, because for whatever crazy, fucking _unfathomable_ reason, they want to keep some modicum of his affection.

Duke calls himself a coward, that he can't kill Mara for Audrey but he can send them both back, knowing their mission to destroy Mara and William will kill them both slowly and tortuously.

He clings to Nathan because it feels like the last time. He and Audrey, they're not dead yet, but he's lost them both. Maybe he should never have gone to the island, never have allowed himself to believe - spared himself and Haven that last brush with hope. It isn't as though it did anyone any good, in the end.

This lives or dies on his word. Audrey took his curse away so that it wasn't supposed to _be_ that way for him anymore.

"Go," he says to Nathan, transferring his grip from elbows to shoulders then sliding his hands up further still, to hold Nathan above his collarbones, then at the sides of his head. He tries not to think about William being so damn hands-on as he touches their foreheads together, and thinks, _Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye_... It was always hopeless. " _Go_."

Nathan doesn't hug, but briefly, his hands catch Duke back, patting somewhere around his ribs.

Then he pulls away and sprints before anyone can stop him. Dwight swears, and others of the party make sounds of indignation and rage, with no understanding. Nathan's forcefield snaps tree branches around him, but Dwight's still on the floor from the last bullet and nobody even tries to shoot this time.

Then he's gone, gone, gone, lost in the trees. Duke thinks about calling him back, but it's too late now. He takes a shuddering breath and waves off the stares of Dwight's people. Jennifer is over by the truck, her body nervous and animated, and protest in all its lines. He makes his way to her, stepping through the others, hearing the echo in his mind of what Audrey said.

Maybe it isn't hopeless. He has Audrey's gift... He has Nathan's promise. After everything that's happened today, maybe he _can_ trust in Nathan to act, to bring something meaningful out of this, _this_ time.

Right now, he curls Jennifer's hand in his and murmurs a half-assed line that he's not sure is meant to be soothing or an apology, and tries to smooth the bright tears waiting in her eyes with a brush of his thumbs.


	10. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Nathan comes back to them alike, indeed, to a whipped dog, tail between his legs and utterly pathetic. Mara watches him approach from her position at the water line, tasting Audrey's despair and finding it the sweetest flavour of all. Her back burns with fiery pain from where his creations tore it up, via William, and even though he did come back, she is _far_ from happy with him.

They are here to steal a new boat, and this spot is nowhere near where they left the other, but he knew to find them here, and that suggests some of what they had tried to build in him two days ago has taken root, after all.

The fleeting sense of his emotions that she receives is strange, but then, he's usually strange. He drags his feet as he crosses the sand. The sky is grey shot with threads of soft yellow, illuminating behind him as he crests a dune.

His awareness of her extreme displeasure is painted on his face as he approaches. She keeps her hands still and gives away nothing until he gets within a few feet of her. Then she lunges and her palm cracks out. There's no aether on it, but it still marks a clear, dark handprint across his face.

"Unteachable _fool_! You would have me lose myself to that paltry _cipher_ , because of you! Why will you not love me as _me_?!" Mara rages, losing all restraint as she shrieks at him.

He fell back when she struck him, the shock and pain of the blow too fleeting, and a memory now as he pokes his face where the darkening handprint lies. Next time, she thinks darkly, _next_ time she needs to make his punishment _hurt_.

Nathan regroups and meets her rage for rage, clenches his hands into fists at his sides and yells back, "Audrey was real! She still is! You just can't stand that she's still strong enough to beat you!"

Mara inhales sharply. When her voice emerges, it echoes, resonant, through the landscape and across the water, louder than seems feasible for her lungs to achieve. "There is only! _One! MARA!"_ She pulls it back to a hiss, oddly frightened and rocked off-balance by the power of her declaration. "There has only ever been _one_ Mara..."

Nathan stands speechless in front of her. She clenches her own fists and thinks of him dead. What's so special about _Nathan_ , anyway, that any part of her should love him so fiercely? She killed him once before. She's killed him a hundred times in one day. She can do it again.

"Mara..." William looks intensely worried for both of them, his eyes flickering between their stand-off. She doesn't know what might have transpired, had his beloved voice not called her back from the edge of it.

Because he _did_ , however, the moment passes, and Mara does not strike, and Nathan lives. Again.

"We're ready to go?" William asks, his voice falsely light, a faint tremor in it. "Good! Let's get back home. We'll all feel better once we're rested... Nathan, won't you help me drag out the boat?" He looks to Mara and indicates with an elaborate and hopeful flourish of a gesture that she should climb into the boat while it's still in the shallow and lapping edges of the waves, where she can avoid getting her feet wet. His voice is strained and eager, his face a match, and his ploy transparent.

Mara sighs and climbs onto the boat, seats herself.

Pushing off, with his legs knee-deep in water, puts Nathan's head next to hers. She leans over and hisses into his ear with venom, catching hold of the lobe and twisting as Sarah once did, ripping from him a startled cry. "She's going to kill herself, next time she gets control. Herself, and all three of us. I can feel her intent right now. _Your_ job now is to help us restrain her and keep her alive. _Do you think you can get behind that?"_

Nathan, obviously, can do nothing else.

* * *

When they reach the island, it's full light and Mara and William's wounds are already healed. Nathan's first act back at the castle is one of betrayal. He helps William to lock Audrey away. Mara clings on by her toenails to keep control until Nathan can modify the servants' quarters off the kitchen area, which are partially underground, into a cell, and they have such a place where her body is _safe_ through the exchange. Nathan can't even argue a case for William to release Audrey. He _doesn't_ want Audrey dead. He even _makes_ the chains, padded and carefully designed against any possibility of self-damage. He sets two shadow policemen to watch her.

"You're so helpful tonight," William says, stopping to touch Nathan's face on the stairs. They're too worn out to even think about the mess of much of the downstairs of the castle. Nathan's too numb inside and out to even have registered, until that point, that they're heading upstairs. Icicles seem to grow inside him, spreading out from William's touch. Contrarily, Nathan's heart seems to expand as his body reacts. "Are you going to continue being helpful?"

Nathan swallows and nods, because it's hard to fight, and his heart and head need _something_ , even something as twisted as William, to fill this gaping, echoing emptiness. It's not going to matter soon anyway, he tells himself. He follows William up to the bedroom, and they're both exhausted, but he doesn't resist as William buries both their grief and frustration in the union of their bodies.

Mara's absence from their bed is like a wound, and so strange that Nathan can barely parse it.

But it's not _Audrey_ who William's chosen for his release. In the boat on the way over, Mara was ranting promises and perversions that twisted up Nathan's stomach, made him think he might vomit over the side. It was meant to be Audrey who William took to bed. But William is not able to force Audrey, unwilling and wearing his beloved's face, no matter how Mara wants and demands it. Even if he is a mass-murderer, Nathan will give him something for drawing that line.

"See? It's good, isn't it?" William pants plaintively, face buried in the back of Nathan's neck, one hand stroking his face and the other curled under his balls. "Tell me you weren't thinking about this when we were rolling on the ground earlier." Any one of the sensations assailing him would be balm for Nathan's touch-starved brain under the right circumstances, and he's tasted despair aplenty today. Somehow a new decision is made. He pushes back onto William and lets out a long groan as the sensation inside him strikes deeper. William celebrates him reacting as more than a limp doll with endless cheerful patter and praise and ridiculous words, sweet like they're real lovers, but he can't really hear any of it.

Losing himself in sensation gives him something else to focus on other than Audrey, suicidal, downstairs in chains, and the solution he somehow needs to find, and hasn't yet but for disparate threads that go nowhere. Other than the bloody images carved into his brain of the massacre at the police station and the sure knowledge that _this is what Mara and William are_.

He needs to deal with them and he doesn't know _how_.

It's not going to be by letting William fuck him through the mattress, but he claws his hands into the sheets he can't feel and rocks back against William, who he _can_ , and lets the sex draw out untempered noises from his lips.

William's palm presses against his forehead, his face buried more firmly in Nathan's neck, teeth and breath lodged against his skin. "Oh, _fuck_ , you're really... Is this... Is this an _apology_?" William sounds ready to fly off into giggles, sounds high as a kite.

Something else in Nathan snaps. If he's an active participant, he's had enough of _this_. Tired of groaning under William in his reluctance, in his insistence that this can't _be_ him, can't be happening. He rolls them over, which is far from easy, with William's hips still trying to go as he moves. He jerks their bodies apart and William makes a startled noise as Nathan pins him face-down.

" _Just because I'm forced to love you_ ," he hisses in William's ear, " _doesn't make you safe from me_." After all, Mara _loves_ _him_. "And if you must know... I think I _do_ prefer we keep this the other way around." He grips underneath William's jaw with one hand, and the other man keeps very still, taut and tense, as Nathan controls him via controlling his access to air. Nathan makes an exploratory foray with his free hand, making William jolt and cry out. "Never done this without Mara's instruction. Sure hope I get it right, it doesn't _hurt_." A moment later, Nathan thrusts into William with minimal preparation.

William gasps incoherently at first, and they're close enough that Nathan feels the shudders go all the way through the other man, almost feels the _pain_.

Then William hisses, " _Attaboy_ ," and his hands reach back to grasp Nathan's hips.

Which is not what Nathan was expecting, but at that point he's too far gone to care.

* * *

When they finally wake, Mara berates them for leaving her chained up for hours and they're on tip-toes for yet another reason. William broods. Nathan focuses on putting the wreckage of the castle's downstairs back together, and then does hand-wash laundry, the most banal of possible tasks after the last two days. Since Sophie is gone, he follows that by making inventory of the kitchen. They need supplies, but a visit to town is the last thing he wants to encourage.

Mara turns back into Audrey and almost throws herself from the tower before Nathan's shadow policemen stop her.

William yells at her, back in the cell, wrapped again in the chains. Nathan drags him off and punches him, and Audrey's face bruises too, and Nathan sags on the floor outside the cell and thinks that it can't get worse than this. He can't hurt William. Audrey doesn't want him near her if he's not going to set her free and let her destroy herself. He stumbles away.

His feet carry him out of the castle, out onto the wind-washed island. The sky is grey, the sea is choppy, the world feels like it agrees with Audrey's assessment of their options. Wind whips his clothes around him, and although he can't feel it, it _looks_ like it's bitterly cold.

He needs to think, and he _can't_ think, about all of this. But he promised Duke, and more than that, back when he saw the bodies in the police station, he'd promised _himself_.

Audrey solved the Troubles. She told him, trying to persuade him to let her kill herself, or worse to do it for her. She fixed Duke's curse to make it, if not bloodless, at least deathless. She cited it as the reason why her work was done, why she had to die to be rid of Mara and William so that they can't _un_ do it again, so that they can't make things _worse_.

Nathan can't kill Audrey. He needs... another option. He sits on a rock and buries his head in his hands and it wouldn't do anything, in his case, but he's still a little bit tempted to step off the edge of the cliff.

He thinks it wouldn't do anything. He still doesn't know how 'connected' they are, and it's not like he's had any physical marks from damage Mara or William have taken. But maybe the connection's stronger the worse the injury is? What the fuck does he know?

He climbs down to the rock pools to double check his reflection in them, ensure that he _doesn't_ have a mark on his face where he punched William earlier, just out of a creeping, paranoid suspicion, knowing he couldn't tell.

Of course he doesn't.

The sea is dark and dour. He wonders how long it would put them back if he set the boat adrift. If they would survive the island in isolation.

The fact is that even if they can't Trouble each other, Mara and William have been around forever, and he's pretty sure they can cobble together another boat. Mara's the one who always instructed him how to _make_ everything, back in the void. Even if she doesn't like getting her hands dirty.

It would take more than that to make the island a prison instead of a fortress.

But by the same token, they could probably survive here too. It will be harder without supply runs, and William would have no pizza, yet they have woods and vegetation, and a small number of animals, and a far more abundant number of sea birds, and of course there is the sea. They could live for a long time off the sea.

With that thought, Nathan makes nets and fishing rods, and by the time it's growing dark, he has caught supper.

Mara is Mara again back at the castle, and makes it known by screaming at him about where he's been all day. He can see her fraying, even as Audrey disintegrates in her despair. Mara hates Audrey, would deny her existence altogether, but they're still more intimately connected than even Mara and William are.

Nathan cooks the fish, struggles to force down a few mouthfuls, and leaves them both complaining about fish bones and his own ineptness.

He heads to the tower. He loves them too much to kill them, even by chance and neglect. If he's going to do it this way, he has to make sure they can survive. He's not satisfied with the water supply on the island. He needs to _make_ some kind of rainwater collection and purification system. He sets up to work in the room at the top of the tower, _makes_ heavy locks for the door, and shuts himself inside with Mara's gift of engineering and science books.

It's just as well Mara has had too much confidence knocked out of her to return to the mainland before she's solved her Audrey problem. Just as well, too, that William is so reluctant to succumb to her increasingly violent demands of what to do with her while she is Audrey - William is definitely averse to torture when he's also going to feel it.

It takes Nathan the next two days to _make_ the island self-sufficient to a degree that he's satisfied with. Meanwhile, Mara's fractures spiral closer to madness, William demands Nathan in his bed when Mara isn't, and Audrey... Nathan's heart comes closer to breaking completely every time he has to face Audrey begging him for death.

* * *

Nathan won't do it.

-Nathan _says_ he won't do it, but surely, eventually, he has to break. The situation they have cannot go on. One day she will get the chance, anyway, Audrey swears it, and when she does, she's going to end this.

At first she was terrified that William would head to the mainland and kill Duke before she had a chance to lay things to rest. But it seems that William couldn't care less about Duke. William won't do even a fraction of the things Mara demands of him any more - no more than Nathan will accede to the request that's most important to Audrey.

Both men have lines, and she - in both her guises - has found _both_ of them.

With neither willing to break the deadlock and change the current, horrible, status quo, she wonders if they realise that if this continues, neither she nor Mara are going to come out of it sane.

Assuming they were ever that to start with.

On the fourth day, Nathan comes to her in her chains and brings aether. Just one. He holds it in his fingers and sits outside of the bars of her cell.

...And, indeed, Mara's castle has a dungeon _now_ , built for her, by Nathan... What _sweet_ gifts he gives.

Nathan sits and looks at her a long time, the single ball of aether resting between his fingers unremarked. They aren't really talking, after Nathan sided with William and Mara and helped them to keep her here like this. (She tries, pointedly, to ignore the memory pushing up from her brain of how she refused to kill _him_ when their situations were reversed.) She shouted at him too often, begged him too often, and now Nathan just _sits_ and studies her sadly. Mara gets more reaction from him than she does.

He's become so good at it that it surprises her when he speaks. "I need you to give me a Trouble. I have a plan, but we have to do it now. As soon as I tell you, Mara knows too, so this will be our only chance."

She _stares_ at him. And he tells her.

He hid it well, but then, he had to. He could not allow her to see the smallest hint, courtesy of her enemy within.

It's jarring to be reminded how efficient he could be at _hiding_ things from her, but her darker side knows that part of him well, has learned from experience.

"Where's William?" she asks.

He flushes almost comically. "In bed. Tired."

Audrey feels her eyes widen. It's not the first time he's used seduction as a weapon, either, but it does astonish her to think that he, what? Deliberately went out to encourage William to fuck himself into a state of exhaustion? Stole aether as he stole away from William's _bed_?

"Safer," he says gruffly. "Much safer than trying to tie him up and pushing him to use the goo balls. Can't knock him out if I need you awake. He sleeps when he's... relaxed. Eventually."

Audrey says carefully, "Okay. So you're going to let me go?"

"I can't kill you." He's almost begging her. "This has _got_ to be better. Please."

He's begging her not to try to die if he gives her access to aether, options, freedom. She's been stuck in the cell for days now, without any control over what she does even when she's herself, and it's hard, thinking it over, contemplating letting him let her out and then using that chance for something _other_ than what she's been _pushing, pushing, pushing_ as her goal and solution.

It's a third option, a middle way, but- "It still doesn't sound much _fun_ , Nathan," she tells him, exasperated.

"I can't kill you," he retorts. "I can't kill _them_. This is the only way." His body jerks in emphasis with the words, and he blinks rapidly, fighting exhaustion or tears or - she can't tell.

"But I'm supposed to do that to you," she points out. What's the difference, _really_ , between death and living death?

He shakes his head, and his face clears, suddenly, washing clean. "Come with me, then."

" _What_?"

"You were in my head before... before you came back in Mara's body. Come back to _me_. I'll be right here. You can..."

"I have no idea _how_ I would do that! I don't know how I _did_ it!"

He hangs his head, and for a moment she thinks that's the death of the idea, the death of any remaining hope, and she's sorry. Then he says, with force, " _Try._ It's a _chance_. That's got to be better than nothing, even if it's only when Mara's asleep, like before. I don't know how aware I'll be - maybe we'll just dream together. But we'll be together."

She continues to stare at him and moves closer to the bars, not knowing how to express any of what she's thinking or feeling in _words_.

"It has to be this. If Mara can get to me, she can undo it. She can make _me_ undo it." He reaches a hand through the bars, and it's shaking so much he can barely target her face. He strokes her cheek with his fingertips and rasps, voice as unsteady as his hand is, "It's the closest to a fairytale ending we're going to get."

The closest Mara and William are, too, Audrey thinks, with resentment because they don't deserve it. They deserve _pain_ and _death_ and _nothing_ , not a castle on an island, and their love for each other and all the time in the world, with Nathan looking after them even in absence.

Nathan could never kill them, though. And only this way does he take them out without destroying her, and thus himself.

Audrey takes a shaky breath because she's been so _angry_ with him these last days that it's almost taken over her world, left her blind and breathless and wrecked beyond tears. A few slip out now, unbidden, impossible to hold back. "This is _no_ fairytale." She lifts her hand to place it on top of his. His eyes are blue and half-crazed, and she wanted to save him, give him his freedom. This isn't that. But maybe it's too late... Too late for them both. He's sinking, even as she is. Maybe this _is_ the one way they have to save each other.

"Come with me," he says again, and this time she answers, " _Yes_."

He presses the black ball of aether into her palm. She feels the tears slip down as she rolls it to crush it between his hand and hers, and leans her face forward, pushing her cheeks against cold metal to kiss him through the bars.

His hand in hers, her hand within his. This one isn't an imposition, it isn't something she's _inflicting_ on him.

It's a partnership.

He clutches her through the bars and the power gathers, waiting coiled and ready, poised. "I'm thinking..." she whispers, against his lips, then kisses him again.

She can do this. It's more complex than anything she's done, but maybe Mara's on-board for it, too. Audrey can feel her stirring, and it isn't resistance. She doesn't think Mara can focus on anything right now other than wanting Audrey out of her head. After all, she cannot do anything, conquer _any_ worlds, until Audrey is _gone_. The trap probably sounds sweet to her now.

Two pre-existing Troubles to merge into this one, and some new additions besides. Things shift inside Nathan, under her palm, and she's so _scared_ she's going to hurt him, that it's going to go wrong. There's such a mess of aether in him already that she feels she's only going to entangle the wrong parts. But the knowledge rises in her with the will - twofold, maybe.

"I'll see you on the other side," she says, and peels her hand away to leave her mark on his palm, a perfect imprint of her smaller hand within his, forever. She feels Mara _shift_ , violently, then feels an odd jolt and hears a noise behind her, low down.

As she's turning, she steps back toward Nathan, only to find her body - _Mara's_ body - unconscious at her feet and that Nathan is _right_ _behind_ her, because she has stepped through the bars.

"Nathan!" she swings around on him. She only dimly remembers those ghostly days. Hadn't anticipated the weird way this _feels_.

He's nodding slowly. His eyes are wild, face ragged. "I'd thought the top of the tower," he says, "but maybe here's as good as anywhere. We need to get Mara out, though."

He's hanging by a thread against his new Trouble taking hold. He was primed for it, ready. He's not going to make the top of the tower. She can feel it as he stumbles to unlock the cell, struggles to unlock the chains, and then unsteadily lifts the body that is no longer Audrey's across his arms. He carries it out past the bars, then out of the room entirely and leans down to rest it gently on the floor just beyond the threshold.

Audrey sees him lay his hand across Mara's brow, and dip his fingertips under the strands of her hair, stealing one last touch.

Then he closes the door and closes them in. They don't need to be in the cell, but there's a bench there, so he goes inside to lie down. He is lurching on his feet and Audrey can't help him. Her ghostly hands pass right through.

There's a shout and a bash on the door Nathan just locked, as Mara comes back to herself, and of course she'll stop this before the plan can be brought to full fruition, if she can.

"Audrey." Nathan's tone draws her attention back to him fast. His eyes are bleeding some transparent substance that glitters like diamond and isn't tears, or isn't _only_ tears. His hand is blindly reaching for her, up from the bench.

Audrey takes a breath she probably doesn't need, "Goodbye, Mara. Enjoy your island kingdom," she states aloud with some force. Nathan's body is coating over with the substance, like it's seeping from the pores of his skin, too, thickening all the time, stiffening his form where he lies. Like Albert Hutton, he'll have no communication with the world outside, but he can _take her in with him_.

She isn't sure if she can still feel Mara dancing on the edges of her thoughts. Maybe it's just her imagination, after it seemed like a constant for so long.

Nathan's hand has already gathered such a thick coating it looks like it's been crystallised in ice. Audrey reaches down and takes it before he can't move any more, to rest it back upon his chest in a position that looks comfortable.

There's a small window along the top of the wall opposite them, and through trees she can see a clear view of the sky as a glistening wall rises up. No ephemeral barrier like Albert Hutton's, and no invisible forcefield any more. Nathan's _make_ and forcefield Troubles were sacrificial parents to this one, to _create_ to _contain_ the two things his life revolves around now; the things he loves and hates and can't destroy.

It had to be solid, real material substance in _this_ world, to keep Mara and William in.

"It's working," Audrey tells him.

"I know." It's barely a mumble. His eyes are set closed, forced down by weight of crystal. His lips almost can't move. Her hand is coated over in crystal, on top of his hand, on his chest. "Come to sleep with me."

Audrey doesn't know if it's oblivion together or eternity together, in whatever worlds of his own Nathan can cook up inside his head. But it's _together_ either way.

She curls up into him, and lets herself disappear.

* * *

In ten years time, a child will run, laughing, along these cliffs on the edge of Tuwiuwok Bluff. She will stop, _here_ , hide from her brother behind that tree with the hole in it. She will happen to look out to sea, and the day will be _just_ clear enough, and the contrast of sky and sea will be _just_ strong enough, and she'll spy-

"Mommy, daddy!" she'll yell, forgetting all about the game. "There's a castle and an island made of crystal, out to sea! It's a princess castle! Look! Look!"

(Her brother will pound into her and yell, "Got you!" and there'll be a minor skirmish before the game is agreed void.)

A tall man with greying long hair will sprint the last several steps up the bluff to separate his children, his expression a little grimmer than they might expect, and his eyes, less sharp than theirs these days, will search the sea for the substance of their report.

Looking out at that castle, encased in its crystal wall, he'll remember heading out on a boat with the Chief of Police and a dozen angry men with guns, ten years back, having fought to be there at all, precious commodity as he'd recently become. Only they found in their way a crystal wall, smooth and hard as diamond, impossible to scale. Deep beneath the sea, when the divers went down, it was riddled with holes to let the tide breathe, but never big enough to permit a person passage through.

The island lay locked-off and unreachable.

As it's remained ever since.

...And Mara and William, presumably, will be still behind that wall; ten years down the line with not a whisper from either of them, best guess will still be that they can't get out.

Maybe Duke will never know how they did it, but Nathan and Audrey did it, keeping Haven safe ever since.

He'll turn, on that bluff ten years hence, to greet the last member of their party, panting from the run, her staggering arrival accompanied by the plaintive protest, "You guys!"

"There's a castle." Joannie will pout and point again. "A _castle_ , mommy."

Then Jennifer, too, will look, narrow her eyes against the sun and squint a sideways challenge for Duke's mouthed warning and his reticence, and say, "Yes, darling, there _is_ a castle."

"A princess castle," their daughter will insist-

-as their son snorts and counters, "Maybe it's an _evil_ castle. With an evil queen! Did ya even think of that?"

Jennifer will sigh and say, "It's a little more complicated, kids. Let's go home." She'll elbow Duke as they reel in the children, and hiss, "It's time we told them, at least a _little_ of it. You know it is."

 _...For Joannie just turned nine and Johnathan is seven, and there is still work out there in the world for the blood they both carry to do._

Later, with the children sleeping, the home they moved into after the _Cape Rouge_ failed to survive a storm cloaked by night, Jennifer will sit down next to Duke, who's sought uncharacteristic refuge in a (really good) bottle of wine and she'll ask, "Do you think he's still alive out there? Do you think _they_ are?"

And Duke will say, "I have no fucking _clue_." He'll hand her the bottle with its inch and a half of liquid velvet far-too-expensive-to-drink-like-this wine, and raise his glass.

They'll drink to the lost, Duke half collapsed across his armchair in a restless grief devoid of answer, Jennifer in contemplative silence with her lips poised around the bottle's rim.

Under the covers, their children will make whispered stories about the hidden island off the coast of Haven, with its castle, and the princess _and_ the evil queen both trapped there, behind impenetrable walls.

THE END

* * *

 _ENDNOTE: In my head, at least (it's all theories and ideas and not a single written word so far), this is part #2 of 3. I have even weirder places I think this concept can go. Part #3 would pick up in 10 years or more so, yeah, at least in my head, this is not the end, just a temporary stopgap like the Barn._


End file.
